


Cambridge, 1923

by drinkbloodlikewine, whiskeyandspite



Series: Epistolary [4]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Historical, Anal, Bad Parenting, Banter, Body Worship, Cambridge, Childhood Trauma, Class Differences, Cultural Differences, Flashbacks, Fluff, Height Differences, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Nostalgia, Oral, Post-World War I, Rimming, Rowing, Slow Reveal, Smoking, Spanking, Tears, Teasing, adoration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-12
Updated: 2016-01-24
Packaged: 2018-05-01 07:14:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 114,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5197013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drinkbloodlikewine/pseuds/drinkbloodlikewine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/pseuds/whiskeyandspite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Tall, though not as tall as some of the boys here. Lanky, but built like a runner or a swimmer, not a body for team sports. Not nearly enough muscle on him for crew. Anthony almost pities him. Pathetic little thing. The college had no idea what they were doing bringing him here. It certainly wasn’t for scholarship.</i>
</p><p>An unlikely meeting between unlikely people, and the surprising love that grows between them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kinneykid3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kinneykid3/gifts).



> Enormous cuddles to [Noodle](http://noodletheelephant.tumblr.com) for reading and correcting and falling in love with them as we have.
> 
> Want early chapters of this series and more? Find out how at our [Patreon](http://www.patreon.com/wwhiskeyandbloodd)!

To be certain, Anthony thinks very little of most ways in which others spend their time.

Politics are a dire tedium, regardless of which side of the same miserable cart to which one hitches their horse. Religion in its entirety has always seemed akin to children arguing as to whether or not there are fairies in the garden, because one might have seen one once but it might also have only been a butterfly. The arts are occasionally a pleasure, but far more a battlefield most days than not, with vicious sniping and explosive texts shaking the fragile earth upon which writers and artists stand their fragile egos.

But there are few activities yet to be created by man so wholly pointless as sport.

Modernized tribal warfare, at its core, with warrior brutes going toe to toe with other warrior brutes simply for wearing opposing colors or sourcing from a patch of land slightly further than their own. In some small way, it’s a blessing that the most with which his students must concern themselves is ‘who kicked the ball better’ or ‘who made the boat move faster’. Better than war, he wagers, but that doesn’t make it any more fruitful a pursuit.

And so Anthony Dimmond, lecturer of King’s College, Cambridge, does not pay any particular heed to the whispers of bringing in an American ringer for the varsity crew.

Nor does Anthony Dimmond yield any mind to the first time he sees said colonial - rebel colonial - staking out his claim upon the steps of the College, to which he does not belong, with loud laughter and unnecessary stretching.

It is only the third time, the fourth, finally the fifth when the American passes conspicuously through his field of vision that Anthony takes any pains at all to notice him.

Tall, though not as tall as some of the boys here. Lanky, but built like a runner or a swimmer, not a body for team sports. Not nearly enough muscle on him for crew. Anthony almost pities him. Pathetic little thing. The college had no idea what they were doing bringing him here. It certainly wasn’t for scholarship.

And still Anthony shudders to think of the education - or lack thereof - that the boy comes from.

The sixth time, he lets his eyes linger, indifferent, on the boy pacing the grass outside his College, back and forth like a stalking housecat, hands in the pockets of his shorts, laces dragging too long along the grass. He turns his head to look at Anthony, and seeing the returned contact, offers a crooked smirk. Anthony sighs and brings a hand to his face to settle his glasses more comfortably before returning to his book.

He should be marking papers.

It’s too damn hot to mark papers.

The boy leaves Anthony’s line of sight, and several minutes later returns to pass through it, stalking the opposite way. As many times disturbing Anthony’s attention in as many days as he has been here.

“Pardon me,” Anthony calls to him, a careless drawl, “but you don’t belong here.”

The student stops and regards him with a gaze of hazy-green akin to the Cam in late summer when the algae blooms. There is no dullness, though. In fact, he has in his attention a brightness so piercing that Anthony can’t help but narrow his own eyes in return.

“I just started a week ago,” the student says. “From -”

“I know where you’re from,” Anthony sighs, setting a finger between the pages of his book. “I could hear the scratch of it were I deaf.”

“Apologies, don.”

The heat’s come early this summer, but beyond the cloying sticking of clothes to skin, it’s brought with it a festivity of flora and fauna as if to provide fanfare to the students during the Lent Term. Pleasant enough to sit outside on a day without papers to review. Pleasant enough to merit dragging a chair from his office to sit and absorb the all-too-infrequent sun.

Pleasant enough when he’s not being stared down by a fresher that’s just come up into civilization.

“What I meant, simply, is that this isn’t your college,” Anthony tells him. “Do you know how I know that?”

The student grins, crooked, too many teeth showing for him to ever hope to pass as English even if the grate of his accent weren’t enough.

“Because you teach here,” he offers.

“Because you’re standing on the grass,” Anthony responds, brow lifting.

The boy looks down then, as though just realizing that he is, indeed, standing on the grass. It is beautifully cared for, trimmed and elegant and thick, and he stretches up onto his toes with a hum before settling to his heels again.

"Well, so I am," he agrees, a twang in his words that just borders on utterly insufferable, until the tone manages to push it over that edge. "Is it illegal in England to stand on the grass?"

Anthony blinks at him, tilts his head. "It is hardly becoming. There are standards observed here that, perhaps, your past university did not see fit to implement."

"And what of those who mow the grass?" the boy asks. "How can they do their vital work if they cannot step on the grass to cut it?"

“There are exceptions to every rule,” Anthony answers, “but their existence does not entitle you to use them. Students who are _terminale_ are allowed to cross the quad. Faculty and staff. Underclassman, of which I’m sure you are, are expected to resist the clarion call of our well-maintained grasses.”

Ducking his head, the student stretches to his toes again, letting the grass spring beneath his heels before stepping forward onto the pavement instead. With a slight incline of his head in thanks, Anthony turns back to his book. 

“I know you,” he says, and Anthony raises his eyes above his glasses, cigarette touched to his lips. The student’s brows lift and his grin widens. “Do you know how I know you?”

“I’m genuinely afraid to ask.”

“I’ve read your books,” he says, stepping closer. “Your poetry, the ones about -”

“I’m aware of their nature,” Anthony responds, ashing his cigarette before taking a slow drag. “And increasingly yours as well. Do you intend to make introduction or publish first?”

“Oh,” he laughs. “I don’t write. I’m studying medicine.”

“An illiterate doctor,” Anthony remarks, dry even as his eyes narrow in subtle delight. “Just what our country needs.”

"The terrible handwriting makes it seem that way," the boy agrees, that wide crooked smile again, too bright to be socially polite. He steps closer and holds out his hand to shake. Large, calloused from rowing, surprisingly clean, Anthony thinks, for a colonial.

"Matthew Brown," he offers. "Matt."

Anthony sets his cigarette between his lips long enough to shake, a puff of smoke coiling on a sigh at Matt’s grip. He withdraws fingers and cigarette both in turn, flicking ash into the flowerbed.

“Where are you meant to be, Mr. Brown?”

Matthew tilts his head a little, and the light catches on a scar that bisects his chin. Anthony follows it upward to wide, thin lips, a crooked nose - ever so slightly - and deeply set eyes. His ears stick out.

Unfortunate.

“Here, I suppose,” Matt shrugs. “I mean, I live at Downing but -”

“But you’re here,” Anthony considers, again flicking his cigarette with practiced disregard. He does derive a distinct pleasure from putting on airs of pomposity for the sake of the freshers, and it’s hardly a struggle to do so when Anthony generally - and rightfully - thinks very highly of himself. “Are you lost?”

Matthew crosses his arms over his chest, not defensive so much as with utterly practiced petulance. He knows this game as well as Anthony knows his own. For a moment neither speak.

"Exploring the grounds," Matthew says, finally. "I have the time, and a week in hardly any readings to neglect. No, Professor Dimmond, I'm not lost."

He steps a little closer, body shifting with a languid grace, and sets a thumb between his teeth, pensive.

"Do you have another?" he nods towards the cigarette. "I've been aching for one all day."

“A pain easily remedied,” Anthony allows, hesitating only a moment more before straightening enough to retrieve a pale yellow packet of cigarettes from his pocket. Primroses fan ostentatious amongst the blue lettering, and he slides it open to offer one out. “To welcome you to Cambridge, then, and to last you until you buy your own. I’d recommend the navy cut,” he notes, nose wrinkling as he leans in to whisper, conspiratorial. “Much more masculine to have a sailor on the slip than flowers.”

Matthew snorts, palming two cigarettes, slipping one behind his ear and setting the other between his lips. He bends at the waist for a light, flicked bright and sulfurous from a match, and he hums, pleased, as he stands straight again.

"My mission in life," he says, letting silver coils pulse from his lips with every word. "Masculinity."

“Especially as it involves sailors,” Anthony murmurs, before he can stop himself. Dark eyes dart above his glasses and he feigns a smile, a slender thing that doesn’t reach his eyes. “My apologies. It’s untoward to make such remarks -”

“It isn’t,” Matt responds. “Don’t apologize.”

“I hardly meant it anyway.”

“Then you certainly shouldn’t apologize.”

“You’ve not been in England long at all, have you,” Anthony snorts, stubbing his cigarette out against the bottom of his chair and flicking his fingers clean of the ash.

Matt shakes his head, allowing this, and Anthony watches as his lips squeeze firm against the cigarette. “No,” he says, “only a week. But I wanted to meet you, as soon as I found out you were here.”

“Me?”

“I’ve read your poems.”

“You’ve said that already.”

“I like them,” Matt tells him, just enough emphasis that it prickles the short hairs at the back of Anthony’s neck. He studies the guileless expression on the student’s face, nearly unblinking in his open honesty, and his brow creases as Matt adds, with a sly smile, “You know quite a bit about masculinity for someone with flowers on their cigarette packet.”

Anthony blinks, eyes widening a moment before he purses his lips and raises his gaze to the sky. He can feel Matthew's grin behind the cigarette as he takes another drag, coy and beautiful.

And terrible. Unnecessary. Anthony doesn't need this again. Especially not with an American.

"Writers are masters at watching and describing," Anthony sighs, as though put upon. "We observe and analyze."

"How scientific."

"Universities are a marvelous mess of attitudes and responses. So much _masculinity_ in such a contained place to study and commit to paper."

Matthew nods, smile still narrowing his eyes, and ashes the cigarette to the ground. It's almost finished, but the boy hardly seems inclined to toss it, apparently as used to smoking to the quick as soldiers had learned, though he can't be older than nineteen, too young for the war.

"Your first collection was written in France," Matthew points out after a moment. "You eloquently dedicated it to 'the trollops who own my heart'. Do they still?"

Anthony bristles, pulling himself up straighter in his chair and losing his page in the process. It’s an unfair question, intentionally personal and unwittingly private. It’s not at all the sort of thing that a student - a _child_ \- who’s just come up should be asking a lecturer that he’s only just met. Hell, he oughtn’t know about Anthony’s poetry at all. Few enough do who actually matter.

“Silence is often confirmation,” Matt observes, and Anthony presses his glasses slowly back up his nose.

“Silence is equally if not more often puzzlement, especially when the cause of it is an impertinent question.”

“You’re not denying it.”

“I needn’t defend myself to you,” Anthony says, even as he realizes he is, in fact, defending himself, and unduly at that. He stands anyway, stuffing his book under his arm in as much a facsimile of grace as he can muster. “You’ve read the other collections?”

“All of them.”

“And their dedications,” Anthony responds, lowering his voice as a passel of boys passes by. “To whom were they inscribed?”

Matt holds his bottom lip beneath the top in thought, eyes sharp as he considers.

“Letters,” he finally says. “Each one a different letter. To H, to W, there were others.”

Anthony is many things, mostly untoward, but he is not a liar, and he does not hide his mild surprise that the student knows this. But the stroking of his ego does little to smooth his ruffled feathers, drawn up sensitive to the memories that still exist in him, vivid as the days they were made.

“T and F,” Anthony finishes for him, as he lifts his chair to bring back inside. “Should they ever release their stranglehold of me, I’ll have nothing more to write about, I’m afraid. Do enjoy your day, Mr. Brown. Best of luck with the cuppers, and your papers when you’re not focused on making boats go fast.”

Matthew looks surprised a moment, and uncaring tosses his cigarette back to the grass as he moves to follow.

"I didn't mean to offend you -"

"Good day, Mr. Brown."

"Truly, I -" A pause as the boy considers his words, and Anthony waits, for some unknown reason, to hear him continue. "I enjoyed the work. It was the first to touch me in a way I’ve been told poetry should. It would be a shame if your dedications were ever to release you, if it means an end to your work."

Anthony blinks slowly, releasing a breath between his lips before pressing them closed again.

"Should other dedications ever find their way to your pages," Matt adds. "I will be delighted to be the first to read about them."

“Will you,” Anthony says. It isn’t a question but Matt steps forward anyway.

“Yes,” he answers, with a breath of laughter and a broad-shouldered certainty that finds Anthony focusing on his breath to recover it from a swift hitch.

He thins his lips in disapproval.

“Consider, Mr. Brown, the notion of American exceptionalism, and what may be gained from the individual who is capable of curbing such impulses,” Anthony responds. “Picking up the remains of your cigarette from our quad would be an appropriate activity to undertake in this contemplation. Rather akin to maintaining one of those stony gardens that the Orientals keep.”

He regrets the sharpness of his tone as soon as it slices free, but makes no immediate amends to staunch whatever damage he’s done with it, carrying his chair and book back up the steps to his College. The boy couldn’t have known not to ask that, or that doing so would drive a probing finger into an open wound that Anthony has yet to heal through application of time, care or alcohol. Matthew Brown is little more than a brash American boy who thinks he’s found a connection, having overlain his own experiences onto ones of which he could not - surely could not - know the depth and width.

At the top of the steps Anthony looks back, releasing a little breath as Matt bends to pick up the remains of his smoke, legs stretching strong and tan in the sun.

“Mr. Brown.”

Matt stands suddenly, catching the cigarette that nearly falls from his ear. He comes closer again though not up the steps, and in this, at least, shows an appreciable sense of restraint.

“I appreciate the intention of your offer,” Anthony says, matchsticks rattling in their little box as he produces one from his pocket, and hands it to Matt. “For your cigarette.”

This time - this time - Anthony does not wait to hear a response.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“What you accuse me of is obscenity.”_
> 
> _“Yes.”_
> 
> _“Illegal and immoral.”_
> 
> _“Yes.”_
> 
> _“Debauchery,” Anthony says, tilting his chin just so. “Depravities against nature itself, seeking pleasure for pleasure’s sake and damn the spiritual or biological drive of it. Illicit liaisons in uncouth quarters, hands and mouths roaming in search of fruits forbidden.”_
> 
> _Matthew slowly licks his bottom lip into his mouth and holds it between his teeth._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta'd by our beloved [Noodle](http://noodletheelephant.tumblr.com/)!

Anthony is used to boys not paying attention during his lectures. Some will write notes, others will curl up and nap. He remembers the time well enough, remembers how he used to hide at the back of the lecture halls - these very lecture halls - and try to massage away a hangover. So he rarely pays it mind, rarely calls them out, unless someone is being particularly obnoxious.

Even then, he is rarely distracted by it.

Now, he can barely keep his words in order, eyes fixed on a mop of messy black hair, too-large ears and bright eyes peeking over folded arms. He doesn’t need to see the smirk to know it’s there. He doesn’t need to have spoken to the boy before to know he doesn’t belong here.

Strangely, beyond blinking at Anthony languidly, Matthew is doing nothing at all disruptive. He is quiet, he is paying attention. He is watching Anthony like he is the most interesting thing in the world.

Goddamn him.

Anthony spans his hands across the podium before him, dropping down a bolgia to the next level of the Inferno. He averts his eyes as Matthew’s gaze drops to his fingers against the aged wood, and then Anthony moves those too, out of sight, just for spite.

He does not raise his eyes to Matthew again, taking enormous pains to look at each student around him instead.

The bulk of Anthony’s energy is spent in supervisions, which Matthew can certainly not broach with his big eyes and his eagerness, being neither a reader of English nor a member of King’s College. That at least is a relief. But lectures are for anyone who wishes to attend, and though it’s unusual for students to voluntarily pursue outside their papers, there’s damn little that Anthony can do about it if they choose to do so.

Let the American learn about Dante then. Let him play whatever game he’s keen on playing, and then he’ll be gone and Anthony can meet with his own students for supes and be done with his day.

And so his day goes, delaying not a moment once he’s done with Dante and Virgil and Beatrice and the whole miserable lot of them. He takes his supervisions in his office, rather than open-air or in one of the commons rooms as he typically prefers. Anthony spends the last half-hour in partial consideration as to what cocktail he’ll make himself upon dropping his bike outside his door at home. Having settled upon a round of French 75’s for himself - so long as he can make it around to the shop for a fresh bottle of gin - he gathers his things, briefcase under his arm, as the door opens again.

“I told you, Maslow, you’ve no need to worry so long as you’re supported by source -”

Anthony stops. Without looking up, his eyes narrow.

“I really enjoyed the lecture,” Matthew says, taking quiet steps into the office. He’s dressed more respectably today, grey pants and a white shirt, with the sleeves folded up to his elbows then pushed up over them. Suspenders a little darker than his pants, black shoes. “I’d never thought of looking at the text that way before.”

“You’ve looked at the text before?”

“It’s a long way to travel to Cambridge from Baltimore,” Matt laughs. “I passed my time reading.”

His smile is warm, not quite the huge grin from the quad a few days before, but deliberate, comfortable. It makes Anthony want to snarl just to make it go away, but in truth he’s fairly sure that should he try, the smile would grow.

“Mr. Brown,” Anthony sighs, letting his bag slip back to his desk. “If you’re intent upon reading for English, then why not pursue it?”

Hell.

Hell and _damn_.

Matthew’s grin widens as Anthony shakes his head emphatically. “Not here,” he clarifies. “Downing. You might be familiar with it, it’s the College where you reside.”

“My parents would tan my hide for it,” Matthew says, and Anthony presses his lips together to resist a sigh of relief at that. “They didn’t send me all the way over here for English.”

“Then they’ll be glad to know that’s how you’re spending your free time,” Anthony challenges, “rather than doing your supervisor’s work or strumming along the river.”

“Well, I do that too,” Matt grins, bringing a hand back to scratch the back of his head. “And I study, sometimes. A lot of what we learn here I’ve covered before but…”

“Why are you here, Mr. Brown?”

“You have office hours now,” Matthew points out. “And I was told I have to see my tutor, should I feel the need, to discuss anything at all.”

Anthony clears his throat, ducking his head, and it does fuck-all to relieve the sudden clenching sensation like a fist around his trachea. Setting his hands flat to the desk, he reminds himself that patience is a virtue. This too does little goddamn good.

“Mr. Brown,” he murmurs. “I know there’s a great deal of jargon here. Had I not been a student before taking up a faculty position, I’d have found it baffling. A tutor is a member of the staff of your own College, you see, typically a Fellow of whatever subject you’re reading -”

“Typically.”

At this, Anthony’s eyes lift and narrow. Matthew steps forward, all long strides and big shoulders, and hands out a folded note that Anthony snatches more abruptly than he means to. He reads the words again and again, and then a third time.

Goddamn him.

 _Goddamn_ him.

“Please close the door,” Anthony finally manages, bracing himself as he sits back into his seat. He wasn’t certain before what about the boy rattled him, perhaps simply unaccustomed to forwardness after being in the land of stiff-upper-lips and disingenuous apologies for so long. Perhaps equally unprepared for what to do about someone having read his work, and expressed distinct appreciation rather than polite confusion.

But this letter, spread beneath Anthony’s hand, this letter that declares Matthew in the tutelage of Anthony for his time at Cambridge, is ample fuel enough to stoke the prickling embers of discomfort into an immolation.

The door clicks closed and Matthew takes a seat without being offered, lips parting on a smile as Anthony watches him.

“I was - and remain - appreciative of your enthusiasm, Mr. Brown,” he begins. “Truly, it’s a rarity that someone has read my work more than once, let alone enjoyed it, let alone - beyond that - paid enough attention to it to notice the dedications. But attending my lectures, outside your studies, _this_ ,” Anthony says, lifting the letter. “You’ll forgive me, I’m certain, for my confusion.”

Another laugh, gentle and breathy, and Matthew looks up at his tutor.

“Look,” he says. “I don’t want to be rude or offend, but I have been reading your books since you released them, since we could get them, in America. It was the first time I felt that I wasn’t insane, reading your words. I didn’t feel alone, anymore.”

He sits back in the seat, setting his foot against the leg of Anthony’s desk and pushing himself to rock back. He sets his hands clasped in his lap and looks at Anthony through his fringe.

“I want to learn from you. About you.” He shrugs, and that grin is back. “Alongside my own studies and sports, of course. It would hardly do to lose my scholarship through laziness and being starry-eyed over a favourite writer.”

The only thing worse than someone being too heartfelt to a near-stranger, too earnest and shameless in their guileless and wide-eyed honesty, is when they’re charming about it. And he is, damn it, he truly is and Anthony rests a hand across his mouth to hide his smile and the dawning warmth of his cheeks. Elbow against the desk, Anthony watches Matthew at length.

“I won’t insult you by asking if you realize what you’re saying.”

“You just did,” Matthew points out. “In a very English fashion.”

Anthony lets his hand drop and his smile show, wan. “Shall I endeavor, then, to discern whether or not you’re merely a fan of particular words set against each other? Or their nature when so assembled?”

Matthew’s chair thumps to the floor and he leans forward, elbows on his knees. The searching gaze that seeks between Anthony’s eyes is almost too much to bear, finally forcing the professor to look once more to the ignominious screed lettered neatly on his desk.

“You found familiarity in them,” Anthony says.

“Yes.”

“In what manner? You have not seen war. I doubt you’ve seen Paris.”

Matthew breathes a laugh, shaking his head in gentle disbelief. “You know what manner,” he says, tongue pressing between his lips. “Masculinity.”

“What you accuse me of is obscenity.”

“Yes.”

“Illegal and immoral.”

“Yes.”

“Debauchery,” Anthony says, tilting his chin just so. “Depravities against nature itself, seeking pleasure for pleasure’s sake and damn the spiritual or biological drive of it. Illicit liaisons in uncouth quarters, hands and mouths roaming in search of fruits forbidden.”

Matthew slowly licks his bottom lip into his mouth and holds it between his teeth. His eyes remain on Anthony, clear and clever and only slightly narrowed, and with a soft exhale he moans. Just quietly, just barely heard - but Anthony hears.

As he should.

“You make a wonderful argument for hedonism,” he says softly.

Anthony spites the quickening of his pulse but can do little to control it. He folds his hands together and pulls himself a little taller in his seat, chin raised, brow lifted.

“Fiction,” he says. “Is imagination not the currency of authorship?”

“For novels, for serials,” Matthew counters. “Not for poetry. Poetry is experience, lived and personal.”

“You make presumptions.”

“I know what I feel,” Matthew says, “when I read your words. I know that you speak to me in a way that not even God does, for all the years I was raised in the church. And I know -”

“We’ve only just met, Mr. Brown,” insists Anthony.

“I know that not once have you denied anything I’ve said,” Matthew tells him.

The room rings with his whispered words, humming at the same pitch as Anthony’s pulse in his ears. He doesn’t need this. He doesn’t want it, though he can hardly stop himself from laughing inwardly even as the insistence occurs to him. It’s been too long, too many years passed since he was filled with the fire that burns so hot before him now. Too many lovers taking pieces of his heart as they left, again and again and again, leaving him with hardly enough to move his blood through his veins, let alone to set pen to paper. It’s been almost a year since he’s written a word, and even that word had immediately been marked out and forgotten in favor of a stiff drink.

“I make an argument for mistakes,” Anthony tells him. “Each poem an attempt to right what went wrong. I make an argument for expression beneath the sanctity of the written word, rarely enough to convict. What would you have me do for you? Shall I pour out years of stories, of rough fucks behind the backs of bars, the sweet tearing tension of a lover’s first press inside? Of partners who have shared my bed and dripped poison, honey-sweet, into my ear, as their hands spread it through my body?”

Another breathless sound from the boy sends Anthony’s head spinning and his belly coiling tight. He lowers his voice further still, gaze settled on the door.

“I don’t sleep with my students, Mr. Brown.”

“I’m not your student,” Matthew whispers. “You’ve reminded me of that more than once.”

Anthony lets his attention drift back to sea-glass green eyes blown wide and attentive.

He could. He could, and then send him on his way, once he’s seen and felt and done what he wanted, the kid would leave him alone anyway - they always do. There’s little he has to give, anyway. Attitude and sarcasm, too much alcohol and a short attention span. This is an infatuation, brought on by imagination and pretty words.

In that, at least, Anthony thinks he can take pride.

He knows how to work his words.

“No,” he says, and Matthew swallows audibly, ducking his head, smile bright and cheeks red.

“Never?”

“No.”

Matthew laughs, and shakes his head. “I wonder if you’re lying to yourself or to me.”

His laugh spreads through Anthony hot as any liquor, and his soft-spoken accusation riles him in much the same way. A flare of pride narrows his eyes, and he leans a little further against the desk.

“You certainly think highly of yourself, don’t you.”

“No,” Matthew echoes. “I think highly of you.”

“You think highly of my words,” Anthony tells him. “I am not only that. They are a part of me, distillations of memories refined into a draught on which you’ve become drunk. Months and months spent on each line of each poem, do you understand? It is no great outpouring of the soul so much as sensation vomited onto a page from which I try to scrape together some semblance of the meal that once formed it. There is more to me than than those books, Mr. Brown, and it is altogether disappointing.”

Matthew laughs again and Anthony doesn’t know how to respond to it. Truly, for one accustomed to the careful dance of politics and propriety in the highest echelons of London’s literary circles, it is a fascination to find himself without answer for that reaction. In Anthony’s attempt to drag their conversation - those little moans, his parted lips - down into the gutter, Matthew’s eyes have only brightened more.

“Do you know how I planned to spend my evening? A humid summer night in Cambridge, when every body within it seeks to slick another with their sweat and fluids,” Anthony challenges, eyes drawing up as Matthew bites his lip, grinning, and shakes his head. “I was going to ride my bike to the shop, wind in my hair and bag against my handlebars. There I intended - before I found myself so delayed - to purchase a bottle of gin, which would lighten the ride home in the pulls I would take from it along the way. Once there, I should have spent the night pursuing the remarkable achievement of finishing it all and falling asleep in my clothes with a blank page spread before me,” he says.

There is no shame in his words, but no pleasure either. It is a confession, to a boy who claims to have looked at Anthony in place of his saints. The words feel cruel, ugly things that spill forth with all the delicacy of spit against a sidewalk, but better he know now - if they are to spend the upcoming term together - than to think anything more of Anthony than the truth of what he has become.

Matthew’s lips part, he blinks and he watches, he just still _bloody_ watches. Anthony wants to scream, to show him the flesh of his own Dorian Gray painting slithering and pulsing in its horror. He wants the boy to see the thing behind the idol he worships so he just leaves him alone, doesn’t tug that little string of hope that tightens against his heart that maybe, just maybe…

The chair groans against the floor as Matthew stands, and Anthony breathes, relieved, resigned, exhausted entirely by words, stupid, spiteful, honest words.

He sits forward, enough to begin to stand, to hold his hand out and wish Matthew a good evening and good studies in future when Matt leans close. Too close. Too close and too warm and just -

His lips taste like peaches, fresh, most likely from the market not far from campus. They’re slightly colder than Anthony’s, and they linger. They linger, breath tickling soft against Anthony’s cheek before Matthew tucks his bottom lip between his teeth again and pulls back.

“I hope,” he whispers, “that maybe one evening, you will invite me to finish the gin with you. And to help you fill a page.”

The backlash of Anthony’s own words strikes into him such sudden agony that it forces a sound from him, small and pained. What has happened to the boy who sat on a rooftop in Paris as bombers hummed by overhead, writing florid words about fucking? What has happened to his fearlessness, his abandon, his love pouring out as constant and heady as the wine he once shared with countless lovers? He is scarcely past thirty and feels decades more, aged by fear and bitterness, two strangers to him once and now his only company.

Perhaps Anthony has truly given away so much of his spirit that only the ghosts of others remain. He could, now, resign himself to howling loneliness, and drive away the selfless and genuine adoration as Matthew offers him.

He could.

He should.

Or he might savor again the sweetness of youth, and its taste of late-summer peaches.

Anthony grasps Matthew by the back of his neck before he can step away, closing his eyes when firm fingers rest against his wrist. He pulls him across the desk, both bent, until their brows meet, and rocking upward, their lips join spreading again.

This time it is Matthew who makes a sound, a little louder, a little weaker, and lets his eyes close, his fingers soothe down over Anthony’s pulse, just under his sleeve. He kisses with abandon, presses close as Anthony pulls back, yields when the professor leans closer.

They are breathless when they pull apart once more, and Matthew’s lips are slick with spit and kissed red when he tilts them in a smile.

“Fuck me,” he laughs, turning his face against Anthony’s and swallowing. “Shall we get drunk this evening, then, sir?”

If Matthew leaves, his idolatry satisfied, then Anthony’s no worse off than he was before.

If Matthew talks, indecent acts alleged, then it’s his word against Anthony’s.

“I don’t know what to do with you,” Anthony murmurs, eyes hooding at the flexion of muscle in Matthew’s shoulders. He watches the summer-sweet grin from up close as it spreads, and sighs long as Matthew tells him:

“I think you know exactly what to do with me.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He can’t help himself. He’s never been able and in youth, falling in love with anyone who spared him notice or flattering words or time with his body, it hardly mattered to share himself with so many. There were always more if those fell through; there was an entire city wherein his existence was allowed to be. Only in age, in England, has he felt the hollows in himself and the emptiness carved out and willingly relinquished. Only now has love become a fearful thing rather than endless, boundless, extraordinary._
> 
> _But there is something in this boy, this Matthew Brown, that sways him from his stasis._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta'd by our beloved [Noodle](http://noodletheelephant.tumblr.com/)!

His office closed and locked, Anthony bids good evening to the students in the commons room as he passes by. Though he hears footsteps behind him, he doesn’t hold the door. His breath catches as its closing takes a beat longer than it should.

He doesn’t look behind himself.

Anthony scarcely makes it to the shop, their door closing but held open when they seem him drop his bike to the pavement with a clatter. Returning to pick it up again, he secures his gin in his bag, cutting heavy into his shoulder, and mounts up.

Still, he doesn’t look behind.

It stands to reason that behind them, coasting with half a block’s length between, lies Sodom and Gomorrah. Cambridge was that to Anthony years before, a hotbed of homosexuality, awakening in him a fire that no war, no heartbreak, no threat of arrest or punishment has dimmed. No one then would have dared call themselves by those unspoken words, but titles mattered little when there were mouths to taste and thighs to rub between.

Most of his classmates grew out of it.

Anthony didn’t.

And even as he again drops his bike unceremoniously to its side and ascends the steps to his home two at a time, he does not look behind himself and risk superstition to insecurity. A shiver crackles bright as lightning up his back when he hears the wooden stairs creak. His door opens to the scent of stale wine and primrose cigarettes. As Anthony’s bag hits the floorboards, he finally turns to find a savage kiss held against his mouth and a salt-pillar body shoved hard against his own.

A step, another, and a kick aimed at the door slaps it closed. Matthew’s hands are in Anthony’s hair and Anthony’s in his and it’s as much a fight as any sort of romance. Matthew is vocal, unashamedly so, soft moans and pleased grunts and heavy breaths. His hands wander and he tugs Anthony’s hair lightly before letting it go and moving to shrug his suspenders off his shoulders instead.

“I hope you didn’t smash the damn bottle in your fervor,” Matt breathes. Anthony just snorts, hooking his fingers in the boy’s pants to pull him close and walk him backwards to the bedroom, or the couch, or whatever the hell comes up behind them first that isn’t the goddamn floor.

“You’ll lick it off the floor if I did.”

Matthew just laughs, flushed bright and delighted, and there is a tremor in his body, a shyness that he has not let show until now. It is not disgust, it is not hesitation. It is the sensation of newness, of having a heavy, panting, hard body against his own where it has only ever been in his imagination before. Matthew leans in to kiss against Anthony’s neck, tasting his pulse, licking long up to his jaw to suck there next.

“God, you’re gorgeous.”

Any doubts that Anthony is Matthew’s first fall away beneath his mouth. Just beneath the bend of his jaw, Matthew sucks firm enough to leave a mark and nearly sweep Anthony’s legs out from under him. He grips the student’s shoulders, fingernails curling into his pressed white shirt to cling to him before he’s pulled under entirely.

Months - actual, miserable months - have passed since the last time Anthony allowed anyone so close to him as this. A vicious combination of playing hard-to-get and hard-to-want has seen him disregard utterly what few motions have been made towards him as to these ends. But the hand that now pulls his greying hair straight, the mouth that drinks heat from his skin - it’s almost enough to convince Anthony that maybe he is still beautiful. Desirable. And that despite his every intention to wither away into a hissing husk made brittle by booze, some spark burns in him still, waiting to be stoked.

Dropping a hand, Anthony grabs Matthew by his suspenders and drags him after. They hardly kiss so much as trap their lips around the other’s breath, whispered sighs puffing swift against the other’s cheek. Back, past the couch and to the bottom floor bedroom, the smaller of those in the house, so taken as it negates the necessity of using stairs.

He jerks Matthew closer and turns him to the bed, shoving him back with a bit-lipped groan when his hands contact stone-hard biceps.

“You look different than in your picture,” Matthew whispers, kicking off his shoes and hurriedly unfastening his suspenders as Anthony looms above him. “I like it.”

“What picture?”

“The engraving, the sketch - in the back of your books,” grins the student. “Do you have any idea how many times I’ve - you know -”

“I assure you I don’t,” Anthony purrs, languidly twisting off his thin summer scarf, aubergine dark.

“Touched myself,” whispers Matthew, eyes bright in the dark room, catching the scant beams that trickle in from outside the bedroom window. His fingers work his shirt open, baring himself in inches, as if to offer himself as sacrifice. “My copies - they’re stained because of you and your words. I would sit up at night beside the window, your poems on my knees and my hand around my cock, imagining all the things you described. Imagining you.”

“Oblique allusions and metaphor,” Anthony answers, but his spine straightens at the words, his cock stiffens, filling fat and flush from every word of worship with which this handsome young man praises him. “It was transparent to you.”

“Like having lived in darkness my entire life,” Matthew whispers, “and someone finally lighting a candle.”

Matthew jerks back his shirt and bares the kind of body of which the wretched Greeks could only dream and form from hardened marble. Defined muscles ripple in ridges up his stomach, ribs expanding wide and stretching tan, smooth skin over the plateaus of his chest. His broad shoulders taper down to his angular waist and the vee of muscle that points down into the waistband of his pants is enough in sight and promise alone that Anthony can hardly breathe.

“It burns, doesn’t it,” Anthony sighs, eyes hooding. “When illumination blinds one for the first time, before their eyes have time to adjust. When the radiance of realization casts away the lies of shadowy shapes and shines truth instead.” He kneels between Matthew’s legs, one hand beside his head, and the other opening his shirt button by button. “The agony of recognizing that we are not malformed in spirit or misshapen in our hearts, as the world sees us, but that we are in our desires as wonderfully and fearfully made as any other.”

Matthew makes a sound, soft and needy and arches up, seeking, laughing when Anthony just as skillfully kneels higher so Matt can’t reach.

“I heard you speak, once,” Matt whispers. “On the radio, a few years ago, and after that I read all your poetry in your voice, low and rumbling enough to vibrate my bones.” He watches as Anthony bares himself, shoulders off his shirt and lets it fall, and reaches up to run his hands over Anthony’s form. Always lithe though never muscled. He sucks in his stomach when he doesn’t need to.

There is a thatch of warm hair just above the waistline of his pants and Matt bites his lips, fingers gently catching in it to tug. Anthony lets himself be pulled closer, setting his other knee to the bed too, and arching forward over Matthew to let his trousers be slid from his hips. He curves catlike, stretching muscles that have for too long gone unused, an innate sensuality repressed as much for his own ease of mind as for society.

He is taller than Matthew, lanky whereas the student is strong, capability built and defined. Anthony lifts a foot to shove his trousers to the ground and stretches bare against Matthew below, smiling lazily when his chest is kissed and reverent hands stroke along his ribs.

“Have you done this before?” he asks, and a snorted laugh is answer enough.

“Yes,” Matthew answers, “a few times.”

“Good,” sighs Anthony, ducking his head to press their brows together. “I don’t want to be responsible for defiling a virgin.”

He drags each leg up in turn to splay over Matthew’s narrow hips. A sharp snap of movement strikes their cocks together and their voices join in shameless pleasure. Anthony avoids a kiss, turning his head aside to direct Matt’s mouth to his cheek instead.

“Should I speak?” Anthony wonders aloud. “Recite poems to you, and let you live out your fantasies? Should I tell you of France, the experiences I lived there at your age? Sordid, all of them. What do you want from me, Mr. Brown? I would hate to disappoint.”

“Just you,” Matt tells him, and it’s so earnest, so softly spoken that for a moment Anthony is entirely thrown for a loop. Then Matt laughs, free and delighted, and bites softly against his earlobe. “Be yourself. I always imagined you swore a lot in bed,”

Matthew’s hands wander, slipping over broad back and down to cup Anthony’s ass, grinning wide when he does.

“Tell me, professor Anthony Dimmond, should you speak?”

The words pull a harsh sigh from the older man; the brush of their stiffening cocks another. Matthew squeezes enough to bear down and Anthony yields, grinding in lazy thrusts against the young man beneath. He’d have ridden a boy like this without question, until he couldn’t walk, years before. He’d have declared his love for him on every breath despite having just met him, years before. With age, with solitude, has come an unfamiliar uncertainty.

The brush of lips against his throat eases it.

The accompanying grin, hopelessly American, settles out the unease further still.

“I should tell you to pull up your trousers and go back to your College,” Anthony rumbles. He shoves their hips together again, insistent. “I should tell you that I haven’t the time for boys a decade younger - more, maybe. I should tell you -”

He doesn’t tell Matthew anything then, because Matthew reaches between them to grasp their cocks together in his fist. A groan splits his words in half and Anthony bows his head against the student’s shoulder, spine rounding and hips bucking against the friction of skin on skin, flushed hot with hammering pulses.

“Fuck,” moans Anthony, dropping a hand to Matt’s chest and digging his nails against smooth skin and firm muscle. “Inside me,” he whispers, ragged, “now.”

“What?” Matthew’s eyes are bright, wide enough that white rims the dark middle. It delights him, he had hardly expected more than to be allowed to fall to his knees and suck the man off, and now this. “God, do you have any idea what you do to me,” he whispers, pressing his lips against the corner of Anthony’s mouth, not pushing a kiss on him when he is so reluctant to give them here.

“Now.”

“Bossy,” Matt laughs, drawing up a knee to gracefully flip them in bed, bending over Anthony now, watching him arch and twist and beg for it with every fibre of his being. 

Lord, he is lovely. He is so lovely.

“Where’s the -”

“Third drawer.”

“Right.” Matt reaches back to work the drawer open, stretching beautiful and naked above Anthony as he does. He has no shame in his body, no shame in his desire for the body beneath him. Young and free and utterly wanton. When he sits back, his expression is utterly wicked, the little tube of jelly in his hands, worked between clever fingers.

“Tell me how you like it,” Matt asks him, leaning down, arching against Anthony as he bites his lip. “Talk dirty to me, professor,” he laughs.

Anthony’s eyes narrow a little at the challenge, but his smile doesn’t wane.

“Do you need instruction?” he purrs, setting a heel to the bed and lifting his hips from it, inviting. “It’s hardly a lesson I’m prepared to teach.”

“To the contrary, sir, I think there’s no one better.”

The title feels wrong, out of place and it makes Anthony feel old. Matthew makes him feel old, with his tight body and his leaky cock, his glistening fingers and cocky grin. Anthony’s cock jerks from his stomach, raising stiffer before bouncing low again.

It’s argument enough, really, as to what’s wrong or right.

“Two fingers,” Anthony tells him, eyes hooded until at the touch of cool wetness between his legs, his eyes flutter closed entirely. “Don’t you dare patronize me by being gentle,” he adds, grinning crooked before covering it with his arm. “I want to feel it for days, Mr. Brown. I want to take a seat upon my bike and flinch in memory of your extraordinary cock.”

Matthew doesn’t hesitate, inexperienced only in that it should not be so easy, it should not be so comfortable to slip his fingers in and have the man beneath him moan at the sensation. He spreads them slowly, slips them free, pushes back in again, over and over as Anthony arches and presses down against his hand, as hungry for it as Matt is to give it to him.

“Should I add three, then?” he asks, slipping another alongside before Anthony can answer, reading the cues his body gives him, the way he shivers and curses and presses his hands over his face. Matt wishes he wouldn’t, he wishes he would let him see. “I’ll watch, you know, when you ride in on your bike, I’ll watch for the little wince when you climb off it and know that was me.”

He adjusts his own position, pressing his cock against Anthony’s thigh as he continues to finger him, seeking gently for that one spot he knows will explode stars behind Anthony’s eyes.

“Then you will grow distracted, more and more, thinking of my fingers in your ass, my cock… will you punish me when you forget your notes at home because you were thinking of how deep I swallowed you the night before? Bend me over your desk?” he laughs.

Anthony reaches for Matt’s jaw, ignoring the kiss that caresses his palm and instead popping him softly on the cheek. Matt’s eyes blow wide and Anthony grins, before grasping Matt by the hair to drag him low again. He stretches between them to shove Matt’s hand free and grasp his cock instead, tugging it in the snared circle of thumb and forefinger.

“Naughty boy,” Anthony purrs, unmistakable approval in his words. “Do you think I won’t leave you just as sore, just as stretched and sloppy from it? I can. I will. And I’ll send you back to class dripping.”

“Mm - you’d fucking better,” Matt replies, breathless, a little, with how good it feels to be touched, how amazing it feels to be touched by _him_. So many nights alone at home, keeping as quiet as he could while his family slept, had Matt imagined this man above him, whispering his poetry to him, nuzzling him and telling him to spread his legs and arch his back. So many nights he had come with this man’s smile behind his eyes.

Then, he had but words.

Not this.

Nothing like this.

Matthew realizes if he has nothing else and no one else for the rest of his life, this will be a life well-lived, and completely so.

“You gonna stay like that?” he asks, voice rougher, lips the same as he tickles them over Anthony’s collarbone.

“On my back?” Anthony asks, as innocent a tone as if inquired to about the weather. He bends his body upward, groaning softly at the pull of muscle along his stomach, his back, between his legs and down to his calves, straining tight where he pushes against the bed. “No,” he decides. “You’re lucky you’re strong.”

Matt grins against Anthony’s cheek, inching forward as Anthony tugs his cock closer. “Why’s that, sir?”

“I’ve been told I’m unwieldy,” Anthony says, before a laugh leaps low from his lips.

He lifts a leg and digs his heel into the small of Matthew’s back, holding it against the curve of his ass. The entrance is slower than Anthony would prefer, but God bless America, he is thick, wide-veined and throbbing for it. A little breath leaves Anthony, brows knitting from the strain, but Matthew no more relents in his steady penetration than Anthony does his grip around the student himself. Shuddering a sigh against Matthew’s shoulder, Anthony grips to his back with fingernails, dragged along contoured muscle.

Anthony laughs, a sudden sound so bright that Matthew’s breath hitches at the sunlit sweetness of it. He leans back within the grasp of the professor - the poet - and raises a brow.

“You know,” Anthony muses, grinning against the back of his hand, “I don’t think I’ve ever shagged an American before.”

“Technically,” Matt groans against him. “You haven’t yet. You’re about to be shagged by one though.”

It’s warning enough, Matt pulls back and thrusts in hard again, pulling Anthony’s voice loud and long and pleased between them.

“There you go,” Matt purrs, grinning wide when Anthony aims another gentle slap at him and catching his wrists to pin above his head as he starts a quick, rough rhythm. This is nothing like the sex he has had before, that was fumbling and quick, nervous and never enthusiastic enough to be this damn good. But this, with Anthony writhing beneath him, turning his head one way or another, arching up, clenching and releasing…

“God, you feel so fucking good,” he breathes, slipping his hands to Anthony’s hair to tug it instead, leaving his hands free once more to leave scratches on Matt’s body that he will touch in the shower as he touches himself.

Anthony’s voice betrays him, sounding sweetly clear until cut into a stiff staccato by Matthew’s relentless thrusts. He bends to his shoulders until the student’s body holds him snared; he arches keening until Matthew keeps him still. Curved high and panting, Anthony twists and tightens his leg over Matthew’s hip until the head of his cock brushes _just there_ and Anthony growls out an ecstatic curse in French.

He hasn’t spoken the language since the last time Hannibal was there.

He doesn’t let the memory linger.

And it’s not hard to avoid when the effect it has on Matthew is so profound. The boy snarls - _snarls!_ \- against Anthony’s throat and bares his teeth against his pulse, scraping over soft skin before sucking roughly.

“You’ll leave a mark,” Anthony scolds him, and when Matthew only sucks harder for his trouble, Anthony laughs, helpless. He bucks his body upward and Matthew goes, pliant and happy and young and lovely as he spreads against the bed and Anthony works himself back onto Matthew's cock. Muscles clenching, stomach tight, Anthony leaves scratches down the rigid contours of Matthew’s abs. Splaying his hands up stiff nipples and graceful throat, Anthony leans across him, fucking himself on Matthew’s length with little more than practiced - very well practiced - undulations of his hips.

“Your cock,” Anthony whispers against his ear, “gives me life.”

“Christ.” Matt drops his head back onto the pillow. Rolling his shoulders, he arches further back, lips parted and eyes closed, hands seeking against Anthony’s thighs. He has never had sex like this before, never with someone so utterly confident in themselves and in their abilities, and never with anyone who - had they the confidence - could actually live up to it.

He can’t believe this is real.

A week before he was still dreaming of this man with his hands between his legs, curled up in bed, and now -

“Tell me,” Matt groans. “Tell me about Paris.” He waits, just a moment, for Anthony to part his lips and then grasps his hips. He shoves up into him hard enough to have Anthony moan, wanton and entirely helpless. Matt grins, opening his eyes, and watches.

Anthony sits perched on Matthew like a cat atop the canary's cage, grinning wide. He curls his hand against the fluttering bird of Matthew's heart and soothes it with splayed fingers. He thinks of Paris in the abstract, not in the personal, focused less on the men who should still be in bed with him and more on the one who is.

Beautiful, brash little thing.

"There was an evening, when the ships came in," Anthony hums. "I stationed myself at _La Liberté_ \- you know, to see in the _gen de mers_ ," he adds with a grin. "I had started tying one on far too soon, nearly a bottle of champagne vanished under the auspices of celebration, of course. It took hardly a moment upon their cheered arrival for me to find the one I wanted to personally welcome home. Blonde. Deeply-set eyes. Very tall.”

"Taller than you?"

"Mm," agrees Anthony, raising up to his knees and sinking slowly back onto Matthew's cock again. "A rarity, to be certain. He wore me like a necktie, draped around his shoulders and dragged by my toes to a back bench. The hunger with which soldiers kiss,” he sighs, fond. “After a time, I went to relieve myself, but there were so many soldiers in the bar, so many of the men who love them that I couldn’t see my tall blonde slumped into a back booth. It hardly mattered, though, when another snared me by the waist. Not so tall, but very broad, ginger hair and ruddy cheeks. I could hardly keep my hands off his arms and other parts,” Anthony murmurs, nose wrinkling in delight.

Matthew laughs, before Anthony calls him a silly boy in French, and Matt bites his lip in a groan.

"One sees the other, my blonde come to rescue me from his compatriot, the fiery little ginger unwilling to relinquish me. It was thrilling. There was a fight," Anthony grins. "Or near to it, anyway, once they caught wind of my trying to spread myself between both their laps in turn. I was flattered, terribly, I gave serious consideration to fucking only the victor. But it was a happy time, Mr. Brown, when the sailors came home on leave, for both those returning from the front and those at home ready to welcome them back."

A turn of his hips strokes Matthew off inside himself, and when he settles back it's with a hand behind himself. He cups Matthew's balls, hot to the touch and so tight they're smooth, thumbing along the dark line that divides them. A smile spreads wide, and Anthony reaches for Matthew's wrist to guide it to his own length, pitifully neglected but no less turgid for it.

"What did you do?" Matt asks, watching as Anthony's cock vanishes into the tunnel of his fist, appears again - head scarlet and glistening - and disappears again.

"I told them _there is no place for war here_ ," Anthony declares in French. "Very dramatic, you see, and very drunk. They risked their lives to keep it at the front, so why fight in the Parisian streets? And we reached an accord. I suggested they could both have me," he laughs, spreading a hand over his face. "At the same time."

Matt curses and arches against him. This beautiful man, free and wild, confident and dramatic. He imagines three figures in a small bed, writhing together and panting, two sharing the slight thing between them. The thought alone nearly pushes Matt over the edge and he moans, stroking a little faster, bringing a hand to Anthony’s chest to spread against it.

"Wanton," he purrs, "hungry, greedy poet. Welcoming home sailors from the war. You must have been radiant," Matthew sighs. "God, you are beautiful."

He wishes he could kiss him. He wishes Anthony would let him, as he had at the door, passionate and hungry, eager. Matt knows he is nothing like the letters Anthony dedicated his beautiful words to, he knows he cannot live up. He just hopes that he is allowed in, even to the threshold, of this man's exquisite mind and heart.

"You are so beautiful." 

A thrust, harder, deeper, and Matthew watches Anthony allow himself to slowly lose his inhibitions to pleasure. Stroked red and leaking, he bends and coils, bites his lip, lets it go, curses loud and throaty before setting a hand to the bed by Matthew's head and curving forward. Matt turns his head to kiss against the fluttering pulse in his wrist, eyes up to watch Anthony allow himself to be undone.

"And then?" Matt asks.

“One left,” Anthony breathes, voice deepening lower still, cracking with a pitched moan. “The blonde, to buy a packet of cigarettes. He brought back enough for us to share as we regained ourselves and I cleaned the mess they’d left.”

Anthony wraps a hand around the back of Matt’s neck and pulls him from the bed, folding his legs around Matt’s hips and fucking himself in his lap. Their brows touch together, their lips brush. He makes a smaller sound, and wonders at the harm in letting himself spill his heart against the mouth of another. He has before, a hundred times and more, and with each, his heart was left for him again, returned with a little more missing than the time before.

He grins instead.

“He also brought back three of his friends.”

Matt laughs, eyes closing and head turning against Anthony’s cheek as he wraps his arms around him and holds him close. This is warm, it is good, there is a sense of _more_ beyond this, a potential Matthew can taste on the air. He hopes. He wraps his arms around Anthony’s shoulders and slows his thrusts to deliberate languid pushes and he hopes.

Freeing a hand from around him, he slips it between them to stroke the poet once more, slipping back the foreskin to thumb the slippery pink slit until Anthony groans, clenches hard around him, relaxes.

"Come on," Matt breathes, teeth gritted and lips drawn up in a grin. He lifts his eyes to Anthony above him and watches pleasure write sonnets across his features.

Curling his arms around Matthew’s neck, tighter, their bodies find ready rhythm between them. Rise and fall, ebb and flow, breath shared between lips so close to touching that they can feel the heat of the other’s nearness. Anthony’s throat jerks as he swallows. Each breath spiking higher in pitch as he edges up the precipice, nearer, nearer, and reaches the peak with a triumphant tension that snaps his body tight and plummets his voice to a resonant moan as he loses himself and sprays thick ropes of semen across Matthew’s chest. It drips to his belly, another spatter. It spreads between his fingers, leaking thick.

His poetry spills in French between them as he clenches his legs and his ass in turn. With ripples of pressure he milks Matthew’s cock inside himself with his muscles alone, watching him with hooded eyes.

“How long have you waited for this?” Anthony whispers in English again, dry lips parted on trembling breath. “Alone in your room but not in the world, were you? You had my words and now you have me, Mr. Brown.”

Matthew makes a sound, helpless and beautiful, and bites his lip, clinging to Anthony who works him to madness with expert turns of him hips. How long? Since he knew that girls could be his best friends but hardly more, since he first saw one of his classmates leave the showers and realized his entire body felt alight with need, since he first parted his lips around another’s cock and knew he could do this forever.

Since he opened Anthony’s book, snuck home from the library, and knew he wasn't alone.

"All my life," he breathes, and, uncaring for the consequences, heart too full to even properly breathe, he snares a hand in Anthony’s hair and brings their lips together once more. Demanding and needy as much as it is entirely desperate, entirely pliant and yielding to the kiss he finds returned.

Anthony makes a sound of protest but only leans closer. Gripping hard in Matt’s cropped hair, Anthony shoves their kiss together with enough force that it hurts, it will leave them tender the next day, touching their lips and remembering this. When Matt’s tongue seeks entry, Anthony allows it. He seeks more than that and damn him, damn this boy and damn Anthony’s own idiot heart that he allows that too.

He can’t help himself. He’s never been able and in youth, falling in love with anyone who spared him notice or flattering words or time with his body, it hardly mattered to share himself with so many. There were always more if those fell through; there was an entire city wherein his existence was allowed to be. Only in age, in England, has he felt the hollows in himself and the emptiness carved out and willingly relinquished. Only now has love become a fearful thing rather than endless, boundless, extraordinary.

But there is something in this boy, this Matthew Brown, that sways him from his stasis. Adoration given freely, a lifetime, _all his life_ he’s said, he’s confessed, and in his abandon Anthony is intoxicated. The curling kiss swept between them helps. The thick cock inside him jerking its release with a gasp of delight helps.

His own length leaks another thick strand between them in response and he hums long and sated against Matthew’s mouth.

He doesn’t stop kissing him.

He doesn’t want to.

Matt breaks it only to breathe, throat clicking, to lie back and drag Anthony with him. Slow undulations against the other even as Anthony arches enough to have him slip free. They are messy, sweaty and shaking, and Matthew feels a familiar hollow in his stomach that has him wanting to cry.

He kisses Anthony again instead. He won’t humiliate himself by sobbing like a child.

Besides, for the first time in many, many years, that hollow aches to be filled with tears of happiness rather than anguish. And those he can hold until he’s at his college, until the showers, where he can laugh against his hand and relive this over and over.

"Fuck," he whispers, lying back but refusing to stop touching the man coiling like a cat above him. Matt laughs, then he laughs more, pressing a palm to his face, watching through his fingers.

“ _Pute_ ,” Anthony murmurs, stretching his body long. He laughs, a single breath, when in turning to his side, Matthew surrounds him in arms again, a leg around his own. “Saying it in French makes even the basest words sound sophisticated.”

He hums with a sleepy smile as Matthew shivers a laugh against his throat. There are minutes more to be spent this way, perhaps an hour if they both drift to sleep for a time. Sticky and sweaty, thumbs stroking over hips and cheeks, breath puffing soft against another’s skin. And then…

And then.

Anthony adjusts enough to regard the student, his ruddy cheeks and delight, overwhelmed to trembling. A gentle palm against Matthew’s cheek eases him. A soft sweep of fingers along pale freckles.

“Shame, really,” Anthony murmurs, “to have already conquered what you set out to achieve within your first term.”

Matthew’s eyes lift to look, reading immediately the pain wrought in lines against the sides of the poet’s mouth. How, he wonders, how can this man not know? Matt stretches, then, slow and deliberate, a groan and a sigh and a comfortable curl back against the man he has so dreamed of.

"Hardly," he sniffs gently. "A conquest implies a taking and a leaving. I never set out to conquer. Conquest leads to rebellion and revolution. Discovery only to understanding and experience."

He shifts to look at Anthony, offers him a smile and tilts his head. "Today you let me discover your body, and even in that a bare minimum. As any scientist, I know more research is in order,” he grins. "Besides. You promised we would get drunk. And I promised you filled pages."

“Have we already promised the other so much?” Anthony muses, but his tone is not unkind. How fully he believes Matthew’s ardent claims will be a consideration for the morning, but for now, at least, it soothes feathers that are all too quick to ruffle, and stirs his heart against his ribs. “Would that you’re able to coax my pen to ink as you’ve coaxed my cock to -”

Matthew’s laugh cuts through the encroaching gloom, scattering maudlin memories into eddies of dust. Anthony strokes his knuckles along Matthew’s cheek. He runs fingers through his hair. He imagines how it would feel to anticipate seeing someone again, and drawing close to them. He imagines the ease that comes of returning home to another who is happy to see him.

That is a far greater expectation than shared bottles and poetry, too substantial a responsibility to saddle upon even such a broad-shouldered boy as Matthew. Someday, Anthony will learn the difference between pleasing daydreams and reality, but for now he is content to be tugged closer in Matthew’s arms and watch him settle to sleep.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Shouldn’t you be in class,” Anthony mutters, retracting his arm to grind his fist against his eyes._
> 
> _“Sunday.”_
> 
> _“Shouldn’t you be in church?”_
> 
> _Matt snorts and his shoulders shift with a silent laugh as he slowly unfurls from how he’d laid curled and he drapes a heavy hot arm over Anthony’s middle. “Rather say a rosary to your thighs, again, if you’ll let me,” he mumbles._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta'd by our beloved [Noodle](http://noodletheelephant.tumblr.com/)!

It’s a poor morning that begins with a bludgeoning.

Anthony doesn’t mean to, of course, when he swings his arm wide across the bed to stretch, sunlight filtering through the thin curtains at nearly midday. It’s only when his elbow contacts another form that grunts in response that he freezes. And it’s the memory of who grunted that makes him grimace.

He’s still in his clothes, mostly, from the night before. Lying sideways across his bed, it isn’t the first time he’s woken up in this state. It is, however, the first time he’s woken up this way without a hangover.

It’s also the first time he’s woken up with a student beside him.

Hell.

Hell and _damn_.

“Shouldn’t you be in class,” Anthony mutters, retracting his arm to grind his fist against his eyes.

“Sunday.”

“Shouldn’t you be in church?”

Matt snorts and his shoulders shift with a silent laugh as he slowly unfurls from how he’d laid curled and he drapes a heavy hot arm over Anthony’s middle. “Rather say a rosary to your thighs, again, if you’ll let me,” he mumbles, still sleepy, hair adorably - damn him - mussed and messy, eyes barely open and smile lazy. It stretches just enough to show his teeth before Matthew brings a hand to his mouth to cover a yawn.

“Shouldn’t _you_ be in church?” he counters.

Anthony hears the words only as an echo, recalling entirely too well the catechisms pressed against his skin before Matthew took Anthony’s cock as communion. It stirs at the memory, used enough the night before that the tilt of blood feels like a blow to the stomach. A displeased sound rumbles low, but despite it, Anthony turns to press a little closer to the student at his side.

“The English are only ever religious three times in our lives,” Anthony says. “Birth, marriage, and death. For God’s sake, we’re not Catholics.”

“Some of you are.”

“Not enough to count, really, and some would argue they’re not truly English anyway,” snorts Anthony. He stretches to stroke through Matthew’s hair, long fingers curling to trace from his temple to his jaw, up the youthful smooth curve of his cheek and beneath his eye. “There’s time to flee, you know. I need to use the loo and you’ll be able to make your escape.”

“Sounds excellent,” Matthew groans, stretching beneath the soft caresses and leaning in to kiss sloppy and gentle against Anthony’s stubbled cheek. He doesn’t hold to Anthony as the other makes to get up, to leave the bedroom, to stumble his way to the bathroom, a delicious and familiar stretch and throb between his legs.

He wonders, leaning one arm against the shelf above the toilet, if the boy will be gone by the time he returns. He probably shouldn’t expect him to stay. He’d gotten the fuck of his imagination, surely it underwhelmed and he can go on contented, knowing. Something about that tugs at Anthony and he frowns, flushing and moving to the sink to wash his hands. He had sworn not to give himself easily, he had sworn not to fall again. And in truth he hasn’t fallen. Stumbled, perhaps, but hardly fallen.

He decides to brush his teeth while he’s here, give the boy time to clear out properly, for some of the smell of sex to dissipate from the bedroom through the partially open window.

Perhaps it’s for the best that Matthew leaves. He will most likely come to his senses and change his mentor to someone in his college, to someone with studies more closely linked to his own than Anthony’s pursuits and pleasures.

Anthony resigns himself to a memory of a good night and finally returns to the bedroom with a slow stride, letting his toes skim the carpet. He curses when he grabs the doorjamb and swings himself into the room again. Amidst the messy sheets and scrunched pillows lies a beautiful pert ass, naked and pink, the sun painting yellow stripes across it. Anthony follows the curved line of spine up to the messy tangle of hair and wonders why the hell he ever considered having the boy leave.

Matthew groans softly and stretches, arching his back and lifting his hips as though he can read the unspoken words wafting around the poet like perfume.

“You're still here. Now what am I to do with you?” Anthony murmurs, forcing his voice low in counterpoint to how high his heart beats in his throat. He’s glad, the miserable old wretch that he is, he’s _glad_ that Matthew is still there. Anthony allows that he deserves, truly, everything ill that’s certainly coming for him, as soft steps carry him towards the bed.

“I can think of a few things,” purrs the American in a sleepy rumble, and Anthony palms his cock to tug, once. Only once. More than once. A few times.

Damn it all to _Hell_.

Matthew is ferociously lovely, moreso now than put-together in Anthony’s office, moreso than even when he was inside of him.

Twice.

Tanned scandalously bronze but for a swath of white around his hips, toned muscle even in relaxation. Smooth skin and a perfect body and those mischievous eyes that turn sleepily across his shoulder, made broad across the top from his rowing, narrow to his hips. And his bottom, God save the Queen, his bottom is a thing of wonder and if Anthony’s damned himself to blackmail or the gaol or both, at least he’ll go with that ass in his memory.

The bed creaks as Anthony sets a knee to it, shedding what scant clothes still cling to him. Another squeal of springs as he brings the other leg up in turn. Dragging a finger along his tongue, Anthony sets his other hand to the bed and brings the damp digit between Matthew’s legs, teasing his cheeks apart.

“Aren’t you sated yet?” Anthony wonders. “My God, youth is wasted on the young. Look at you.”

“Mm - you’re not that old,” Matthew purrs back, arching his back again to adjust his position, pushing closer against Anthony’s finger, settling comfortably between his legs. He is relaxed here, entirely contented to be touched and teased and seen. Especially by this man. Only by this man.

Matt bites his lip and squirms, delighted, when Anthony pushes his finger into him. He is still raw from the night before, first on his knees, chest pressed to the bed, moaning whatever mindless words came to him as he was taken. Then on his back, later, when both were sweaty and sleepy and lazy in their fucking. Matt clenches around the digit and grins wide when Anthony sighs a curse against him.

“I could go again,” he answers finally, amused.

“I could drink a crate of wine by myself,” Anthony snorts. “It doesn’t mean I should.”

“False equivalence,” Matthew responds, folding his arms beneath his head to watch over his shoulder. Anthony twists his finger and presses deeper, knuckles brushing wrinkled skin as he slowly works wide Matthew’s already open opening. “Why shouldn’t we?”

“It’s the Sabbath.”

“You’re not religious,” grins Matthew.

“You are.”

“Not enough to forsake mortal pleasures.”

“Attachment,” Anthony challenges instead, sliding in a second finger beside the first, and curling his hand around his cock. He tugs it against his palm, foreskin slipping easily against the head, already slick with anticipation.

Matthew groans low, still a sleepy sound, almost a fussy one, and spreads his thighs a little more as he inhales again. Slowly, he arches his back again and uses the motion to bend his knees a bit, tilting himself up and gently fucking back against the fingers in him.

“Is it so bad to grow attached?” he asks. His tone holds none of the petulant demands of an affair, none of the childish whimsy of a crush. He asks plainly and clearly, despite how his breathing already picks up to gentle hitches and his throat clicks as he swallows. “To have this, when we both need the pleasure and good company to go with it?”

“There is always risk,” Anthony says, releasing his now-stiff cock - damn it - to rest against his thighs before he spreads his knees and sinks low. “But so long as that’s all this is -”

“Is it all there will be?”

Anthony rests his free hand against Matthew’s ass and kisses the swell of it, just where it curves, blushing primrose pink. He doesn’t have an immediate answer for the question Matthew asks him - in truth he’s stunned to hear it asked at all. Another kiss draws him further inward. A third ripples a moan across Matthew’s breath, like a pebble in a pond.

Before he can sink his lips against the student’s skin again, a hand lodges itself in Anthony’s hair. Strong fingers wrap in strands that each year are greying, and Anthony raises his eyes, and a brow, to the demanding young man squirming to regard him. His eyes beg the question again, insistent.

“Do you truly wish for me to answer?” Anthony blinks, wetting his lips with the tip of his tongue. “Now, Mr. Brown, just now? Truly?”

A full-body shiver takes the younger man and he moans a laugh into the pillow before him. His fingers continue to caress over Anthony’s hair, gentle, fond, something that the poet at once welcomes and wants to shrink from. After a moment, Matthew lets him go, contented in his youthful pride, to allow this first.

“I’m persistent,” he reminds Anthony, another laugh catching his breath as the other draws the tip of his nose against his stretched hole first, with a hum. “I will ask again.”

“Then I am grateful for this brief reprieve,” murmurs Anthony, splaying his fingers with a sigh. “Selfish thing.”

He dips his tongue between his fingers, pressing the tip against Matthew’s opening as he moans, inside to hear the beautiful sound drop lower. His face in his arms, Matthew’s voice is muffled, but echoes through his body as his bottom pushes higher, back bending deep. He tries to bring a knee up but it slides flat again when Anthony tugs against tender muscle to make room for his tongue within.

Sweat and the salt from their last coupling stings Anthony’s tongue, sought out in deep twists to fill Matthew with it. He pulls his fingers free only to close his lips against the student’s hole, sucking noisy and hard, and dropping a hand to his own cock when Matthew begins to shake from it.

Matthew doesn’t hold back his pleasure in the morning either. It is almost reassuring that darkness isn’t the thing that brings this out in him, that he is entirely shameless with sun pooling warm in his dark hair and at the base of his arched back. He is a lovely thing and that, at least, Anthony can acknowledge without any guilt whatsoever.

Matt clings with weak hands against the sheets and pants hot breaths to the bed. He rocks back against Anthony’s tongue, relishing the way every curl of those lips and every hum from the man pulls Matt’s cock to twitching. He is leaking already, sore, still, exhausted, still, and so, so pleased to be here, taken again.

“Your cock,” he moans after a few more blissful moments of indescribable pleasure. “I want to feel your cock again… please.”

Anthony hums but it’s short-lived, when the vibrations of his lips jerk a curse from Matthew. Grinning, Anthony rests his cheek against Matthew’s cheek, relenting to instead trace soft kisses against him. Every brush of contact makes him shiver; every whisper of breath makes him squirm. Had Matthew given Anthony any reason to disbelieve his words, he’d think the boy virginal, for his responsiveness alone.

But then, it’s doubtful he’d have lasted nearly so long - or as often - the night before if he were.

“Again,” Anthony murmurs, eyes narrowing in pleasure that twines warm through his voice.

“Put your cock in me,” begs Matthew, shameless, near-laughing as he says it. “Please, sir -”

A swift hand brought down against his bottom leaves a snap in the air and red marks in its wake. Matthew chokes on his breath when the firm spank connects, eyes wide. For an instant, Anthony wonders if he hasn’t made - as ever - a monumental error in judgment.

For an instant.

Because in the next, he realizes the error in his presumption. Matthew buries his groan into the pillow and shoves his ass back hard enough that Anthony is forced to sit up. He clutches the sheets beneath him, he pulls his knees up and sits on them, splayed wide. Anthony watches the display in rapt wonder, not only at his own baffling luck, but at the guileless beauty spread in shameless desire before him.

“Oh,” Anthony finally sighs. “You are naughty, aren’t you?”

Another helpless moan and Matthew laughs, young and blissful. He is so hard, leaking in sticky drops against the sheets. He responds to Anthony’s words as he does to his hands, his mouth, his cock. His entire body taking the sensation and running it through himself over and over, a feedback loop of delight and pleasure.

“I think I want to enjoy you like this,” Anthony murmurs, drawing his knuckles over hot skin. “Bent over for me. Taking my hand -” another spank, hard, on the other cheek. “- this way, for my pleasure.”

Matt shivers, adjusts himself to rest more comfortably in bed, still bent and presented, still hard and leaking against his hand, eyes still narrowed in dark delight over his shoulder.

“Yes,” he says at last, watches Anthony raise an eyebrow. “Yes, I am naughty, sir,” Matt clarifies, “since I imagined this often enough. In bed. Alone. Hand between my legs.”

“Did you?”

“With you using your book as the implement,” Matt adds with a warm laugh, biting his lip again. “Punishing me with your gorgeous words in the kinkiest way I could imagine.” Another sharp slap and Matthew’s voice grows high and breathless. “God, you do that again and I’ll come before you can enjoy me properly.”

“Do what?” Anthony asks, tone pitching to innocent curiosity, hand rubbing gentle, now, over the red mark he had left seconds before. Matthew wriggles, turns his body towards Anthony’s palm.

“Spank me,” he clarifies, glancing over his shoulder again. “Sir.”

So Anthony does. Hard enough to have Matthew curl into himself and then arch once more, a hand between his legs now not to stroke but to hold back from coming as he shivers and bites his lip and looks at Anthony again.

Catholics, like many of the English, have always had a predilection for corporal punishment, Anthony muses. Mortification of the flesh and so on, learning to enjoy the punishment they take for having enjoyed other things. It was never something that Anthony went for particularly - certain partners did, of course, and he would indulge them to the tune of a red bottom and pulled hair, but Matthew seems to have a keen tendency towards making Anthony enjoy things he might not otherwise have.

Having sex with students.

Having sex with Americans.

Spanking said American students until their bottoms are bright as berries.

Matthew turns his wrist and Anthony claps him across the backside again, his other hand around his own length to curl in soft strokes.

“You show poor restraint, Mr. Brown,” purrs Anthony, his voice twisting through the loud moan of the student bared before him. “And unfortunate judgment in partners, you do realize that I could do this all -” A spank. “- day -” Another. “- don’t you?”

“I damn well hope so,” groans Matthew, and Anthony lets go of his cock to grasp Matthew’s hair and bend his head higher instead.

“I should bend you over my knee,” Anthony grins, “but you’d mess my trousers, wouldn’t you?”

Matthew’s throat jerks as he swallows, allowing his hair to be pulled in exchange for being able to see Anthony there alongside him, eyes bright with excitement. “You’re not wearing trousers,” he points out, and before Anthony can stop himself, he laughs.

Matt’s grin is bright, warming his cheeks further, and he strokes himself just once, enough to part his lips before he folds one between his teeth. His eyes narrow and he shifts back a little, enough to rub his sore ass against Anthony’s cock. “I could, however,” he murmurs. “Sit in your lap and fuck myself against you. _That_ would be something to enjoy on a late Sunday morning before a lazy breakfast.”

“Who said I’m making you breakfast?”

“Now who’s greedy,” Matthew laughs, before pushing back enough to dislodge Anthony from behind him.

The poet takes the brash cue as it’s intended, slipping back to the mattress to sit and watch Matthew press himself catlike across it. Ass above his ankles, arms spread before him, it’s no wonder that Cambridge vied for him; the strength in his body is honed and evident. What’s more a wonder is that he so entirely wants to fuck Anthony Dimmond, and not any of the other beauties who’d no doubt hurl themselves at his feet just to be walked over by him.

He’ll find them. Or they’ll find him. But for now, Anthony’s not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. Or a future crew champion in the - 

Well. He’s already looked there, plenty.

As Matthew sits back on his heels, Anthony twists to sit at the fore of the bed. Back against the headboard, toes buried in the sheets, he bends his knees and lets his cock stand prominent and proud between his thighs. Matthew’s gaze doesn’t immediately fall there, though, no. His hand dips to stroke himself as he takes in all the curves and contours, flat planes and sharp angles of Anthony’s body. His attention rests on shoulders and collarbones, on chest and stomach. On the arms that Anthony lifts to grasp the headboard behind him as he squirms beneath the damn near reverent attention.

“ _Get in my lap before I drag you here_ ,” Anthony murmurs in French, his lips parting after in earnest surprise to have slipped back to it. He hasn’t spoken it since the last time Hannibal and Will came to visit. Before that, France.

“God,” Anthony sighs, brows drawing in a little. “Look at what you do to me.”

Matthew’s smile is slow, delighted, and he slinks nearer on all fours like a cat. Close enough to kiss, he wrinkles his nose and closes his eyes.

"You could have called me hillbilly trash for all I understood of it, but hell, please, whatever it is say it again."

Anthony blinks again, immediately thrust back in time six years. Earnest blue eyes asking him to translate ridiculous sappy things. Dark eyes that asked him in earnest how to wish his soldier luck and tell him he would wait.

"Uneducated boy," he purrs, bending forward to seek Matthew’s lips for a chaste kiss. "Doesn't America teach French?"

"I elected for Spanish," Matt counters, grinning.

" _Then I'll tell you in Spanish,_ " Anthony replies, the language rolling just as easily off his tongue as French had. He watches Matt's eyes widen, his smile broadens as he listens. Anthony reaches forward to take Matthew’s chin between his fingers, pulling him closer. " _In my lap, now, before I drag you here._ "

Matthew’s eyes flicker, barely a blink, and he shivers, crawling closer. Obediently, he settles with his thighs spread wide over Anthony’s, toes to the bed, legs bent beautifully. 

"Yes, sir," he replies, grinning broad. He brings up a hand behind himself to stroke Anthony up and guide him to his entrance, teasing just a moment before sinking down against his cock with a low, loud groan. Anthony grasps beneath his thighs to slow the movement, to extend the dizzying heat that squeezes around his length. Cheeks prickling heat, Anthony adjusts, wriggling a little to slouch and better see his cock disappear inside, inch by beautiful inch.

His breath only moves again when Matthew sinks down to the base, and stirs his hips in a slow circle. Fascinated fingers spread across his belly as Anthony watches the muscles ripple within, growing rigid in stark furrows of definition and loosening to softness with each slow roll of his body. Anthony remains all but motionless, rapt as Matthew begins to languidly fuck himself, but Matthew’s hands clasping suddenly around the back of his neck pull an eager whimper from the poet. Their lips collapse together in a kiss, until Anthony smacks his bottom in a crisp spank again, and Matthew’s mouth untangles with a moan.

“Did you imagine you were there with me in Paris,” Anthony asks, repeating the words again in French and grinning as Matthew’s cock jerks against his belly in response. He lowers a hand to milk free a clear bead from it, rubbing it back against the tip with his thumb. “When you saw the truth past the poetry, were you one of the men who shared in me? Were you me, being shared? Did you imagine each position into which we might bend our bodies, each filthy, furtive act spilling seed and sweat?”

Again, the words repeated in French are enough to nearly shatter the boy astride him, powerful muscles clenching as he pistons himself faster, curls his legs tighter against Anthony’s hips. Anthony lets himself be moved, dragged nearer until their bodies spread sweat between them. He wraps his arms around Matthew’s narrow torso, one circling his waist, the other higher to place a palm between his shoulders.

It strikes as sudden as a wildfire, crackling to life from a lightning strike against old, dry tinder. Anthony’s fingers curl and his lungs burn. His heart races and he speaks only to release the smoke coiling thick and heady inside him.

“Or did you imagine having me all to yourself, when you cloistered away to purify from yourself the ignominious disregard of others? Their narrow looks, their serpentine hiss,” Anthony whispers, voice roughened as Matthew’s ass squeezes tight around him. “My poetry meant for you alone, in all the world. My body shared with no other, worshipful and beloved both, our union made sacred by the purity of your devotion? Did you build your church in the space between my words?”

"Oh my God," Matthew breathes, entire body taut, at attention as the words are painted against his skin. He imagined so much. He imagined happiness. He imagined a world away, being in the arms of the man who wrote such incredible words. "At first I imagined myself as you," he admits, trembling as he pulls off almost entirely and clenches hard before sinking down again. "Taken apart and filled anew with words and life and love. And then?"

"Then?"

Matthew laughs, shakes his head, cheeks painted pink, eyes barely open. He leaks copious fluid down the shaft of his cock, against Anthony’s hand. He can feel that Anthony is, too. The slide grows easier with every rolling undulation.

"I imagined this," he admits. "That I could pull your words from you."

The sweet simplicity of his claim works a shaky groan from Anthony’s chest. His throat clicks as he tries to swallow it down but he can hardly keep his lips from parting, he can hardly breathe at all. It has been so long, so very long since anyone has moved Anthony to words in this way. He was certain it would not happen again, and only memories would move his pen. But in the gentle joy that bends Matthew’s smile crooked and the adoration that brought his body in offering, there is an innocence of spirit that makes Anthony’s heart skitter faster than only the physical could.

“As inspiration,” Anthony murmurs, lips curling on a gasp as Matthew takes him to the hilt and rocks forwards and back, thrusting into the quickening tug of Anthony’s fist. He holds the back of Matthew’s neck with the other hand, in mirror to how Matthew holds him snared. Their brows press together, their breath joins, as gasping against the precipice of release, Anthony whispers grinning. “The muse incarnate, in the form of a _very_ naughty young man.”

“Fuck,” Matt whimpers, squeezing his thighs together, trembling as he freezes, curled against Anthony, coming hard in his hand in quick spurts of thick white. It is everything. It is the man before him, and his words. It is the pleasure of being allowed this, it is the confirmation, finally, from the one man he needed it from, that Matthew is not crazy.

That he is not broken.

He arches enough to press his lips to Anthony’s, a sloppy and messy kiss as he moans and clenches against him, working Anthony’s cock in slow turns of his hips, over and over until he can feel him tense, can feel his breathing hitch as well.

The movements tremble but do not break, unsteady thrusts driving upward, curving down, again and again as Anthony’s cock slicks inside the charming young athlete, talented and bright, who for some reason has desired Anthony perhaps more than any other ever has before. The thought is enough for Anthony’s length to jerk again, another spill of seed spasming free. As their hips slow, their mouths do too, but neither part. Not when Anthony’s cock slips free. Not when their bodies slide together to lay pressed close.

He surrounds Matthew in his arms, touching soft kisses to his top lip, the bottom, the corners each in turn. They pace their breath by the contact of their lips; their hearts slow, beating steady in heavy satisfaction. It is only reluctantly that Anthony stretches away, towards the nightstand beside the bed. Little kisses drape adoring against his throat, his shoulder, as he digs in the drawer and hushes the fussy sounds from the student atop him.

“Demanding,” he scolds Matthew warmly, extracting a buried notebook too long unused and the pen stuck between its pages.

Matthew slows his kisses until they become almost licks, catlike, as he watches Anthony flick through pages of scribbled mess, circled words and useless doodling to find a clean one. He feels his heart speed up at this alone, that Anthony would pick up a pen after this, that he would settle, not shove Matthew away, and set pen to paper to begin writing.

In truth, it’s magical.

Matthew shifts enough to lay his head against Anthony’s chest, himself half atop the man, and when a questioning hum comes he merely hums back. For as long as he’s allowed, he will stay. Draped heavy and messy in bed with this man he is slowly but entirely certainly falling in love with.

He feels warm fingers in his hair, carding through it, and closes his eyes to doze as words pour free in gentle pen-scratches against the page held above him.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Then you harbor unexpressed expectations that cannot but end in frustration.” Anthony’s smile curves wider, but does not meet his eyes. “You are aware that what we do, simple as it is, is illegal?”_
> 
> _“I’m aware.”_
> 
> _“Pathways laid out readily for men and women to walk together are barred to us, Mr. Brown. Perhaps you should make clear your desires, so that I may tell you how untenable they are.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta'd by our beloved [Noodle](http://noodletheelephant.tumblr.com/)!

_Dear Hannibal,_

_Remind me once more how I ever thought myself capable of enjoying Americans in Paris and then chastened you for your love of the British? Now faced with a choice, I find myself wanting nothing more than to cloister myself away surrounded by proper accents and accentuated diction. Instead, I am plagued -_ plagued _\- by a southern drawl and a mop of dark hair._

_It’s a nightmare, Hannibal, that such a thing would be the one to pull my pen back to the paper and have it spill words, not merely ink._

_It’s humiliating._

_It’s the damnedest thing._

_I have attached the poem for your amusement. Now, tell me it doesn’t read like those you used to dictate to me over absinthe and too much cigarette smoke on the roof? Tell me this doesn’t capture the hot evenings and cool summer nights?_

_I loathe him. Terrible boy._

_I’ll find a way to extricate myself, my friend, I guarantee it. Until then, I’ve found myself in need of another notebook._

_Yours, exasperated,  
Anthony_

\---

Anthony could care less for the boat race, or the training for it. He would take the train with the other students and happily stay with Hannibal and Will for several days, but until then he is contented to ignore the hubbub around him as the student body collectively goes mental watching the varsity team train in the river.

It is at once a blessing and a curse, in that no one comes to his office hours, too busy discussing the odds of their beating Oxford again this year.

High, Anthony would wager. They haven’t been beaten in several years, something he gleefully enjoys reminding Will of when they meet in London.

But the day is warm and the fields call, and who is Anthony but not a slave to the muse as it tugs him from the office for a stroll along the grounds, past the river and towards the herd of boys gathered to watch the team climb from the water to the shore, delighted and exhausted. He greets some of the other professors with a smile, a gentle roll of his eyes to keep up appearances of his detestation of the sport. He watches with the others, the boys stand tall and glistening with sweat and river water on the shore. He watches, with the rest of them, the way Matthew’s skin seems almost golden in the light. He watches, he is sure, not alone, the way his short ride up just enough that -

Damn him.

“Professor Dimmond,” Matthew calls, walking up from the river as the boys and their team spread out across the grounds. “I didn’t think you one to be fond of racing. Did you come to watch me row?”

Anthony holds his breath at the words, dark eyes darting to those around them, however distant. There is reason enough for them to know each other, despite differing papers and different colleges. He is for all intents and purposes the boy’s advisor, however poorly chosen seems the fit of it to outside eyes.

He is that and more, as they both know all too well.

“It is a beautiful day in Cambridge,” Anthony tells him, his words as wide and sweeping as the long strides he takes across the grass. “One hopes to find the river Cam in less commotion, but one cannot help but be drawn to such a ruckus.”

Matthew’s grin spreads wide, too wide always, over bright straight teeth. Anthony wants suddenly to taste them, to press to evenness the crooked grin beneath his own lips and to follow the stiff line of Matthew’s teeth with his tongue.

“Do you want to go out on it?” Matthew offers, and Anthony folds his arms as if affronted.

“Punting? Are you offering to shove for me after your undoubtedly enormous exertions?”

“Faster than we’ve ever rowed, fast enough to drown Oxford in our wake,” Matthew says, stepping close to Anthony, too close, his shoulders wide and the sheen of sweat glistening bright upon his arms, taut with muscle freshly pulled. “I’m offering,” he says, and Anthony’s breath shortens at the words.

Anthony shrugs his shoulders higher and lets them slump. The notebook in his bag weighs heavy with demand, aching for the inking of fresh words upon its pages. Before him, the American stands willing. Waiting. And Anthony feels the sting of memory press sharp and sweet within regions that dare not be given name to watch him so.

“Past the fen,” Anthony suggests. “Past the Lammas land.” A step takes him closer, eyes uplifted towards the blue sky scattered with thick-flocked clouds above. “There is a bed and breakfast there, just before Catz. I’ve little with me for a night’s stay, beyond what I wear. Will it be enough?”

“Yes,” Matthew breathes, grinning wide. “More than. You haven’t any morning classes?”

“I haven’t any at all,” Anthony confirms. “It is a Saturday a week before the race. The students are excused to enjoy themselves.”

“I’m sure they shall,” Matt laughs, bringing a hand up to swipe his damp hair from his face. He keeps his arm there, elbow bent and fingers curled in the dark strands, before letting it drop to his side once more. “Should I join you, then, in bringing nothing with me but the clothes on my back?” he asks, mischievous grin narrowing his eyes as he cocks his hips and lifts his chin with pride, setting his hands to his narrow waist.

Anthony is helpless, as if he were a schoolboy sundered by his first pangs of affection towards another. His heart presses so hard against his ribs, it’s a wonder it doesn’t part as if beneath a knife and spill in pieces to the ground. What has become of the poet Anthony Dimmond, beloved by fairies across the land? What has become of the professor Anthony Dimmond, encased in ice but with sharp enough edges to cut any who comes near?

He wants nothing more than to sink into the strong, adoring arms of the student before him, and he revels in the resentment this raises in instinctive response.

“We will go,” Anthony says, carefully, “to the boats. You will manage the pole?”

“With skill,” Matthew interjects, to a sigh from Anthony as he passes by. Their shoulders brush together, illicit contact that sends a shiver through the older man, as the younger turns to follow.

“Then we will see where we end up,” Anthony declares, tossing his bag to an empty punt. He regards it with mistrust until with hurried steps Matthew comes close behind him, and offers an arm. With wry disdain, outwardly, and an inward thrill as weak and fluttering as a little songbird within his chest, Anthony takes Matthew’s arm for long enough to step into the boat and rest against the bow. With uncertainty, the terrible little wooden thing rocking uneasily beneath him, Anthony spreads his arms, and watches as Matthew takes up the pole and ascends to the till.

He is glorious, all but bare in his short pants and sweat-soaked shirt. Behind him, the afternoon sun illuminates his hair in radiant copper and bronze, not merely brown but a striking autumn auburn. God above, how Anthony loathes him his beauty. How he loves it, too, resentful and admiring all at once of Matthew’s seemingly boundless youth.

Matthew begins the boat's slow movement down the river, pushing the pole in languid strokes. There are several boats out, not just theirs. Some with students, others with teachers, some, as their own, hold both, all gentlemen engaged in comfortable conversation, laughter, delight. It eases Anthony somewhat. He wonders to where his sense of wild abandon has vanished. He wonders when he started to care what anyone would think of him.

Matthew seems still immune, in his youth, to such worries and woes. Free to enjoy the splendor of the late afternoon with his mentor in his boat. Looking forward to enjoying his evening with his lover in his bed.

He convinces himself they have not made a habit of this. But in truth, Matthew's heart still flutters with the hope, every time, that Anthony will ask him to stay. Will tell him to bring his things. Will turn one morning to him and drape a heavy arm over his middle and not gently shove him to get up.

It is never cruel, never that.

But there is still a wall, a barricade that Matt can feel against himself when they are past their intimacy, past their fucking. A wall he seeks to break with sweet kisses and warm words. Biting his lip he tilts his weight, just enough to rock the boat, and lifts his eyes from the water to watch his professor watching him. There’s a flicker of feigned displeasure at the movement, but a smile lingers in the corners of the poet’s eyes.

Anthony seeks out a cigarette from his breast pocket, the same little blue and yellow packet he always smokes. He does not face the river ahead as Matthew does, steering carefully with steady pushes against the soft riverbed beneath. He faces Matthew, only, long legs crossed at the knees and trousers riding up to bare slender ankles above polished tan brogues. His deep green jacket is open over his shirt, buttons undone and tie loose. Suspenders only lengthen his body more, and the light catches on patches of grey as it flickers through the leaves of trees above.

“I’m afraid to ask,” drawls Anthony, as the boats around them grow fewer in passing through Coe Fen.

“Afraid?”

“No,” Anthony says, eyes narrowing in thought behind his glasses. “Not afraid to ask. Afraid of the answer.”

“Ask,” laughs Matthew, as Anthony sighs smoke twining into strands of sunshine.

“You’re thinking far too hard for someone who’s just rowed so much of the Cam so quickly,” he says. “What’s troubling you, Mr. Brown?”

Matthew’s jaw works but not in dismay, sifting the words out behind his teeth before offering them forth, carefully. “I told you I’m persistent.”

“So you are.”

“And you never answered my question.”

Anthony settles into a deeper sprawl, his head against the bow as he lays back and watches shadow and light play across the leaves, painting them in shades of green and grey. “As to whether or not our manner of companionship, such as it is, is in fact all that it is,” he responds, taking a long, crackling drag of his primrose oil cigarette. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t recall the precise wording, I was fairly occupied at the time. If I said yes, speaking theoretically, would you be disappointed?”

Matthew’s grin pulls crooked a moment and he tempers it only by looking forward, past the beautiful man sprawled in his boat. He imagines slapping the suspenders against Anthony’s skin before working them off entirely and has to bite his lip.

“Speaking theoretically,” Matt replies. “I would be.”

Anthony is unsurprised by the answer, ashing his cigarette over the side of the punt with a careful tap of his fingertip. He tilts his head forward again to watch, gaze tracing the flexing contours of muscles along his student’s shoulders, his arms. His attention lingers longest, though, on Matthew’s smile, guileless and winsome in his honesty.

“Then you harbor unexpressed expectations that cannot but end in frustration.” Anthony’s smile curves wider, but does not meet his eyes. “You are aware that what we do, simple as it is, is illegal?”

“I’m aware.”

“Pathways laid out readily for men and women to walk together are barred to us, Mr. Brown. Perhaps you should make clear your desires, so that I may tell you how untenable they are.”

Matthew considers for a moment, says nothing. Past them, another boat slowly glides, conversation there loud and filled with laughter. And once they pass, Matthew parts his lips with his tongue and speaks again.

“My desires, for this evening at least, are to see you bared. Warmed in a bath I draw for you, sharing cigarettes in it with me until the water turns cool and our bodies exhausted.” He sends another pleased look at Anthony and then turns his eyes away.

He knows this game, denial and he have shared a dance like this for many years. And he knows, too, that it had to be him to step away, by his own choice, in the end.

“And then bed, I think,” he continues. “Where I will spread your legs and bury my face between them.”

Anthony hums, smile broadening a little more. He stubs his cigarette out against the underside of the seat beneath which his legs are stretched. “In that, at least, I will not disappoint. I hope, anyway.”

Matthew laughs, snorting softly, and Anthony draws his legs up to rest his arms across his knees. Carefully poleing through a bend in the river, Matthew focuses for a moment on the water, and Anthony allows himself the quiet rapture of his student’s presence. Serene and confident, ferociously strong and capable of tenderness just as readily. He is the stuff of Grecian sculptures and Romantic poetry.

Anthony reminds himself how often those stories have ended in heartbreak.

“We must be content with what we have,” he advises, careful with his words and tone alike. “I have known only two, ever, who have not suffered for their affections, and found between them a lasting and consuming love. The others -”

“You,” Matthew interjects, and Anthony blinks at him in genuine surprise.

“Yes,” he says. “I have tried, Mr. Brown. Too many years, I have tried to find that deep and abiding love, and discovered again and again that even beds of roses bear sharp thorns. One can only be pricked so many times before they develop scar tissue, and decide that perhaps it is at best an impermanent place to rest. I doubt that it is in the fate of those like us to find the happiness that men and women, together, are free to know. Domestic bliss and resounding love are fleeting things, and we are cursed as Sisyphus to struggle for a peak that we will never see.”

Matthew listens, he doesn’t interrupt or deny the words, he doesn’t complain that Anthony is being entirely too negative, that he should live in the now, enjoy the moment, and let love grow within that. He is hardly naive. Younger, certainly, innocent in that he has not seen the war, but Matthew’s wars have been fought silently, behind false smiles and gentle rejections of sweet girls who looked his way. His wars have had just as many casualties, and left just as many scars for him to carry.

“Then why cling to the fleeting?” he asks after a moment. “Why see that as a shadow that overhangs us like a stormcloud that comes nearer? If it will come inevitably, as you believe, then let it. But in that time, fearing it will only draw it closer, and make the wait all the more unbearable.”

He tilts his head and offers a smile, narrowing his eyes, rolling his bottom lip between his teeth.

“Come to the inn with me,” he says. “Spend the night with me. Or shall I turn our little boat around?”

Anthony pushes his tongue against the back of his teeth and traps his words there. How does one begin to explain how it feels when little fragments of one’s self are severed, again and again? A portion given here, a piece taken there, each time gone in permanency and never to be regrown. How can he explain to Matthew, a bright-eyed boy of eighteen, how very small one can feel when sacrifices gladly made are callously taken, naively discarded, on and on and on.

He presses his hand beneath his glasses and pushes his fingers against his eyes.

He hopes that Matthew never knows how it feels. He hopes that this, as with many boys - especially at university - is a fleeting phase and that he finds stability. And he hopes that the pieces of himself that Matthew holds already, unknowing, are treated gently when they are taken away from him.

“If we spend any longer on the Cam, I’ll be seasick,” Anthony declares. “And as you’ve already made plans for the evening to be spent between my legs, it would be unconscionably rude as the guest of honor not to stay for the festivities.”

Matt’s smile is bright and wide, and he allows the deflection to be just what it is. He will find a way, he hopes, to show Anthony that he doesn’t want this to be fleeting. He will find a way, he hopes, into the poet’s heart, as Anthony has so cleverly and elegantly made a home already in Matthew’s. And if he doesn’t, then he supposes it is only fair that he learn through practice, because theory is hardly the same.

“You know where to go,” Matt reminds him. “I’m merely the mode of transportation to get there.” He curls his toes and then splays them again, holding his balance expertly even as the pole leaves the water and slips back into it with a quiet whisper. “Where to, sir?”

Anthony offers a smile, some inward and unspoken gratitude for Matthew’s wisdom in not forcing the issue. He’ll learn, in time, or if fate is kind to him, he will go on never knowing of what Anthony speaks.

“Just up ahead, past the tributary,” Anthony says, sitting forward to gird himself for the disembarkment. “It is a scarlet red Georgian nightmare, impossible to miss. You’ll be able to leave the punt docked at Catz a little further downriver.”

“And then?”

“You’ll ask for the name Taormina and therein we will find ourselves,” Anthony responds, cursing low as the boat collides softly with the shore. Unsteady, he stands and stumbles a little, his balance only found when Matthew steps forward to grasp his arm. Their breath joins the wind in the trees, rustling stalks of rivergrass tall around them; the sweep of their kiss echoes the water’s movement against the boat.

A playful slap against Matthew’s cheek dismisses him, and with a smile he goes. He finds the dock easily enough and takes his time to secure the punt there. He knows that what he wants is unattainable. At least, it is in England. And in America. But perhaps the mainland is kinder, perhaps there, if he can ever draw Anthony out deep enough, they will find space to be as they are. He thinks of Paris. He wishes he had been there, then, when Anthony’s spirit was as his own.

But in truth, he loves him now.

Matthew makes his way back with slow and measured steps, enjoying the grass between his toes as he avoids the gravelled paths to save his feet. Upon entry he quotes the name and finds himself directed upstairs.

He thinks of how easy it had been to convince Anthony to come with him here. He thinks of how easy it has been to soften him with nuzzles and kisses and conversations about anything at all. He thinks of how his heart beats quicker just thinking of the poet so near, drawing fingers through his hair, sleepily murmuring something against him.

He hears the bath running as he approaches the room and with a smile, gently taps his knuckles against the door.

“Come in,” calls Anthony, who tries and fails to quiet the nervous-giddy quickening of his heart as the door clicks open and locks closed again. A knee against the edge of the enormous clawfoot tub, his feet bare, he tests the water again with his fingertips and flicks them dry, sleeves ruched to his elbows.

Matthew watches him, sinuous curves and long, lean lines. He has no doubt that in his youth, Anthony was an extraordinary beauty, languidly straddling the line between feminine and masculine, undoubtedly pleased by the androgyny that Matthew can still see in his liquid, careless movements. But he is, Matthew thinks, just as beautiful now, his years of love and loss and survival writ in gentle creases when he smiles, in the tufts of pale grey that tangle with dark hair.

“What exceptional service,” Anthony says, words lengthening to a lazy drawl. “A substantial bath and a wide bed and a charming young man sent to assist me in occupying all of them.”

“English hospitality at its finest, so I hear,” Matthew murmurs, stepping closer and wrapping his arms around Anthony’s middle as he presses kisses against his shoulder. He rubs warm circles against Anthony’s stomach before letting his fingers walk up the front of his shirt and starting to work the buttons free, one by one.

He is careful and quiet, turning his face against Anthony’s back as the other checks the water again, arches back against the young man behind him. And there, just there, that wall falls away for a moment, an hour, a day, maybe more. It is when Anthony lets go and lets Matthew in. His heart flutters like a bird trapped in his ribcage, and Matthew soothes that with warm fingers too. Carefully he slips the shirt from Anthony’s pants, warming his palms against the hot skin before pushing his fingers beneath the suspenders he wears and teasing up to his shoulders again.

The frantic push and pull of their time together has eased in the weeks they’ve known each other. Though there are times of need so intense it nears violence in the collision of their bodies, with familiarity has come a quieter comfort. It is this that Anthony has feared and it is this that moves him more than only fucking; it is this quietude that stirs his pen to capture the calm space they have found together.

He rests his head back against Matthew’s shoulder and seeking out the salt of sweat with a kiss against his throat. Matthew slips loose a suspender to let it drop to Anthony’s hip; the other he snaps with a little _pop_ against his professor’s shoulder to hear him laugh. Anthony wraps a hand around the back of Matt’s neck and keeps their bodies pressed together, as Matthew seeks to unfasten the poet’s trousers button by button.

“I worry for your studies, in being so distracted,” teases Anthony.

“I haven’t missed tutoring once,” Matthew answers, grinning. “Nor a single essay, nor a lecture.”

“Then I worry for Cambridge, that our students have so much free time. I must submit a proposal to the dean at once. Idle hands are the Devil’s playground,” he murmurs, breath catching short when Matthew spreads his fingers through downy hair and between Anthony’s legs. “And Heaven, all at once,” he adds with a groan.

Matt hums against his shoulder, parts his lips to kiss hot and wet there as the bath continues to fill. He strokes Anthony slowly, teasing and deliberate, exploring the back of his neck, his shoulders, his ears with warm lips until both are laughing. Then Matthew starts to peel his clothes fully away, kneeling to pool Anthony’s pants on the floor, waiting for him to step out of them before folding them loosely and pushing them to the side, out of the way.

“How lucky I am,” Matthew considers. “I walk into a well-appointed room, already paid for and secured, and this beautiful naked man waits filling a bath for me.”

“You presume.”

“I see and I deduce.” Matt kisses against Anthony’s bottom and stands again, prepared to be similarly bared.

“Handsome, athletic, and clever too,” Anthony intones, clucking his tongue. “How fortunate are we both.”

He skims a hand across his cock, half-hard, as he lets his attention travel the length of the young man before him. For a moment, Anthony wonders if there is any real difference between playing house and keeping one; between making all the motions of a relationship and sustaining it, truly. There is a perpetual comfort in self-deception, he supposes, though whether he deceives himself as to the nature of their affection or he deceives himself as to that deception is unclear.

Anthony forgets the paradox entirely when Matthew raises a brow, expectant.

Warm hands find their way beneath his sporting shirt, spanning over Matthew’s stomach made taut from exertion. His skin is heated, smooth over strong muscle bared in delicious inches as his shirt catches against Anthony’s wrists. When Matt lifts his arms, Anthony pulls the shirt free, breathing in deep the musky masculine scent of sweat that dizzies his heart and spins his thoughts. The sight of Matthew, so soon after rowing, is a new delight to observe. His well-honed body shows its power, practiced and fierce, in every shadow of muscle and glint of golden skin.

“You are extraordinary,” Anthony whispers, pressing his palms against Matthew’s stomach, spreading fingers upward across his chest. He follows his shoulders and his collarbones, down over his ribs to frame his narrow waist. He hooks his fingers into the top of Matthew’s athletic shorts and leans into him, lips pressed to his throat, almost weakened. “Apollonian,” he whispers, biting his lip, releasing it, helpless. “You remind me why I am the way that I am.”

Matthew shivers, standing still though he wants nothing more than to drape his arms over Anthony’s shoulders and hold him near. He smiles, he grins, and turns his head against Anthony’s hair.

“Good,” he whispers, lips parting as Anthony pushes his shorts down lower, enough to show the warm thatch of dark hair, enough that the base of his cock is freed before Anthony stops again and Matt laughs a breathless little moan against him.

“Let me be yours then,” he murmurs, giving in and raising his arms to slide them over Anthony’s shoulders, grinning when he lowers himself to the floor as he peels Matt’s shorts from him. Matthew’s hands move up his neck, to the back of his head, through his hair, that he cards between his fingers, that he curls against and gently tugs to pull a sound from him.

Gaze upturned, along the young, proud body before him, he meets the eyes of the clever student who has through perseverance and passion brought Anthony’s dismal heart to youthful joy again. He presses his palms to Matthew’s hipbones to feel them, prominent and sharp. He brings his mouth near to the narrowing vee of muscle that twitches beneath his breath. Matthew removes Anthony’s glasses to set them beside the sink, and Anthony shivers when his other hand curls a little tighter and tugs sparks beneath his skin from scalp to curling toes.

He mouths against the dark forest of hair and seeks with ready lips the base of Matthew’s cock. It swells against his kiss, filling hot, the mingled scents of sex and sweat a sweet intoxication to the poet on his knees. He curves his tongue around his student’s shaft, then spreads it flat across the wrinkled skin of his scrotum, eyes narrowing in delight when there, too, Matthew responds, balls tightening.

“Bath,” Matthew tells him, cheeks prickled with little spots of rosy blush, his grin wide.

“Tease,” complains Anthony, leaning in again, or trying to anyway, when Matthew tugs his hair. He returns his grin with a little wince, and lets himself be brought to his feet, pushing their mouths together in a near-drunken kiss.

It is intoxicating and incredible and everything Matt wants and needs all at once. He can barely breathe, he doesn’t want to. He wants to be held this way and kissed this way and breathed against like he is the only thing keeping this man standing.

His heart hammers and he laughs, pressing a kiss to Anthony’s cheek, to his hair, a moan to his ear when Anthony’s hand slips between his legs to stroke him.

“Bath,” he whimpers, and Anthony laughs. He bends to turn the tap off, the water high enough that some could spill when they both climb in but neither care. He hisses a little, setting cold feet to hot water, but then he settles with a groan, stretching long and letting his knees to the edges of the tub. He narrows his eyes, brings up a hand and crooks his finger at Matthew.

“Get over here.”

So Matthew does, setting his feet between Anthony’s legs, sinking to his knees. He smiles when the poet shakes his head, eyes still narrowed, that hint of a smile tickling his lips and Matt cannot resist leaning in to kiss him. This, at least, he is allowed, languid and deep, before, obediently, Matthew turns to rest back to chest against Anthony behind him. Spreading his legs as Anthony’s are, resting his head against his shoulder.

Anthony stretches to tug his jacket closer, tossed carelessly to the floor. He frees a cigarette from within, setting it to Matthew’s lips as he had described so distinctly in the punt together. A match snaps bright, whispering sulfur into the air, and Anthony cups a hand as Matthew drags to catch the flame. The poet shakes the match to snuff it and flicks it to the floor, draping his arms across Matthew’s chest.

He stretches his legs a little. He squeezes them closer together. Every movement shifts the water around them and Matthew’s body sleek and heavy against his own. Anthony drapes kisses against his hair, behind his ear, the back of his jaw, his shoulder.

“The Greeks were idolatrous of their athletes,” Anthony murmurs, grasping the little bar of soap to bring into the bath with them. “Their artists sculpted sporting youth to almost the exclusion of all else. There was nothing more the embodiment of beauty. And their poets wrote paeans to the striking young men, racing bare, flinging discus, oiled sleek.” He rubs slow circles over Matthew’s chest, accepting a drag from the cigarette when it’s held to his lips, watching lather foam white against Matthew’s sun-bronzed skin.

“Will you immortalize me?” Matthew asks, and Anthony tilts a smile against his cheek, nuzzling against his temple.

“Inspire me,” he purrs, low and throaty, grinning when Matthew shivers despite the steaming heat surrounding them. Matt slips his hand back to reach between them but Anthony wriggles away from his grasping fingers, with a laugh. “Not like that. You’ve already inspired me like that. Tell me something I don’t know about you.”

Matt laughs, accepting the cigarette once more and arching up to let Anthony continue to wash him clean. He considers. His life to date has been far from interesting. He has struggled and worked, hidden from his family and did everything in his power to get to Cambridge.

With a deep inhale he passes the cigarette back and hums, letting the smoke mingle with the steam from the bath.

"I grew up poor," he says. "Middle child of six. You'd think my parents would stop after me but... that's Catholics for you."

He lays back against Anthony more and breathes slowly, letting his eyes close and his body float. He smiles as Anthony caresses him, parts his lips for the cigarette again. "I'm woefully uninspiring," he apologizes.

“Nonsense,” Anthony tells him, soapy fingers sliding slippery over sinuous muscle. “Brothers or sisters?”

“Sisters, I’m the only boy.”

“And how does a poor boy from Baltimore come to find himself on Cambridge’s varsity crew?”

“I had to work,” Matt says. “Half the day in school, half out, since I was thirteen. You get strong hauling boxes around. As for rowing -”

Anthony hums, brows lifting.

“I liked the locker room,” he grins around the cigarette, and Anthony laughs in genuine surprise.

“Of course you did.”

“Of course I did. Kept me in high school and out of work, figured one of the family had to be something better than a fucking packer in a factory, so I got good at rowing.”

“Is that when you knew?” Anthony asks, rinsing Matthew clean with cupped palmfuls of water. “Watching the other boys in their towels…”

Matt hums and bends up, enough that his cock breaches the water and then he settles again, comfortable. 

"Lord, they were beautiful," Matt sighs, smiling. "I did everything in that bloody gym, well beyond just rowing crew. Folded towels. Slaved in the laundry room. Got to watch the swim team practice."

"Naughty boy."

"Oh, I was terrible," Matt laughs, ashing the cigarette over the edge of the tub, passing it back to Anthony. "But I didn't know what it meant beyond teen rebellion. And then I found your book. Entirely by accident, on a return cart in the library."

“Seems an apt place for them, really - that or the bin,” snorts Anthony, grinning when he’s clumsily elbowed in the stomach. He stows the soap away and sinks back into the bath, fetching another cigarette to light from the first, smoke taking the place of steam as the water slowly cools.

“We were doing a section on poetry,” Matthew says. “I didn’t know anything about it. Working-class kid, I was lucky I could read at all. Took it home with me, not even sure I checked it out. Whoever returned it probably had to pay a fine for it.”

“As most do when they read it.”

“Hush,” Matt tells him, and Anthony obeys with a hum, nosing content into Matthew’s hair. “I never brought it back. I have it, still, with the little decimal marking on the side and all. Pages all stuck together -”

“How sinful.”

"It's all your fault," Matt laughs. "Your words woke in me something I had never known. For several days I played ill. Hid in the room I shared with my sister and just read your words and touched."

Anthony's hand seeks down to touch him now too, taking a slow drag of the cigarette before passing it to Matthew.

"Like this?"

"Yes.” Breathless, warm giddy, delighted. Matt bites his lip. "I wanted to know how such a man understood me so deeply. Could touch me with his words alone."

“Did you know anyone else bent?”

Matt shakes his head, eyes closing and head eased against Anthony’s shoulder, as unhurried strokes shift the water to rhythmic lapping against their bodies. “No. I had no idea it was anyone else in the world but me. Hardly even knew it was me. And then - it was like coming home, to a place I’d never been before. That doesn’t make any sense, does it?”

“Perfectly so.”

A grin tilts against Anthony’s throat as Matt nuzzles against him. “It was terrifying. All I knew were hurried mentions of Sodom and Gomorrah, that it was full of fairies and that God cursed them. And suddenly there I was, facing myself, facing God, trying like hell not to face my parents, but I wasn’t alone. I had you.”

“And it thrilled you,” asks Anthony.

“Just as much as it scared the shit out of me. But you weren’t afraid of this in your poems. You were out there living like this, all the time, with other men and you weren’t hiding it.”

Anthony grins, a little sheepish, and sighs. “A prouder and more unapologetic queer you’ve never met.”

"You're perfect," Matthew laughs, biting his lip and spreading his legs further, sliding one to stretch long as he lets Anthony stroke him. "I dreamed of getting out after that. More than before. Baltimore wasn't ever for me. Too narrow-minded. Too dirty. I dreamed of Paris. I wondered if I could be like the men you wrote of. I wondered if you would want me in your bed."

His breath hitches and Matt smiles, delighted and warm, flushed and drowsy.

"And now that you've been there?" Anthony asks him, ashing the cigarette, pressing it to Matthew's lips again. "Is it as poetic?"

A low, keening moan, smoke billowing warm, is answer enough. For long minutes, there is no sound but eager sighs and softly clicking water against the sides of the bath. Anthony watches through the film of bubbles as his hand glides across the turgid skin of Matthew’s cock, thick in his grasp, satisfyingly heavy. He rests his chin on Matt’s shoulder, their heads tilted to rest against the other. Matthew’s legs stretch and tremble in unconscious coiling, hips rocking to meet the patient rhythm of Anthony’s fist. Anthony grazes a pale pink nipple with his other hand to feel it stiffen and strum from his student a sweet whimper.

“Do they know?” Anthony finally asks. “Your family. Your friends back home.”

“Family? No. I told them I didn’t want to date to focus on my schoolwork. I think my dad suspects but he never said anything about it. My friends,” Matt shrugs, laughing as his body arches upward outside his volition again, tugged taut by steady strokes. “Just the ones I slept with.”

Anthony’s hand slips higher, from teasing nipples to cradling Matthew’s chin. He turns his head a little more and holds a kiss against his cheek, until his lips part with a sigh.

“I want you in my bed, Mr. Brown,” he murmurs. “Matthew, I would like for you to be there for as long as you wish to be. There is only one condition.”

“Sir,” whispers Matthew.

“When you do not wish to be there any longer, make it known to me simply, quickly and clearly,” Anthony says, following the line of Matthew’s jaw with a delicate brush of lips.

Matthew shivers, entirely overcome, entirely enamored. He wants to tell him that had he the choice, he would never leave Anthony’s bed. He wants to tell him that childish dreams come nowhere near to how good the real thing is. He bites his lip and makes another gentle sound of pleasure. He winds his hand behind himself into Anthony’s hair and grasps it, scratching softly against his scalp.

"Only if you promise the same," he murmurs.

Anthony makes a small sound, weaker than he has ever let himself sound before to this boy, his student, a remarkable young man who has stitch by stitch begun to unravel him. He wants, desperately, to hope that Matthew will not grow tired of him. That he will not, as so many others have, seek out greener pastures and see Anthony only as a wonderful few weeks, as a wanton weekend spent. A twist of his hips drives his insatiable erection against the curve of Matthew’s back and all at once he releases his jaw, his cock, and he sinks his arms around the young man pressed against him.

“I will,” Anthony says, as smoke twists simmering into the air around them. “I promise.”

Matthew relishes in the closeness, wraps his arms atop Anthony’s and squirms just enough to move back against his poet. The water is cooler now but far from unpleasant, and Matt turns his head against Anthony’s chest, nuzzles there. Then he gently extricates himself from Anthony's arms and turns to face him instead.

He lies comfortably between Anthony’s legs and rests his cheek against his collarbone. He reaches with a wet hand for the cigarette and inhales deeply when it is given.

"Tell me something," he murmurs.

Anthony’s expression softens, the lines eased from around his eyes, lips parting softly. He raises a hand to stroke his knuckles down his student’s cheek, tracing the hard line of his jaw with gentle touch. There is so much to be said, and so little of it seems interesting. So much of it, by compare, is damning and Anthony shakes his head, only once.

“What do you want to know?” he asks, strangely solemn before this young man who has bared himself, guileless and innocent, before him.

“Something I don’t know already,” Matthew answers, and Anthony cannot fault him for the cheek of it. The poet settles deeper into the bath, knees pointed above the water. He sets the tip of the cigarette against the surface to stop its smoldering, and drops it outside the bath.

“I found myself, as you did, through poetry,” Anthony says, his smile easing small when Matthew grins at him. “Through Wilde, in particular, though his name was ignominious even then. I read his words, his painted boys and his idols, sinful and terrible all of them, and I knew of what he spoke. It was as though he wrote in two languages, one on the surface, and one beneath, and I felt as though I had stumbled into a secret world in which I, too, spoke both.”

"How many do you speak?" Matt asks him suddenly, delighted.

"Seven."

"Truly?"

"Of those the world acknowledges, yes. Eight, if we add this one to the mix."

"You are extraordinary," Matthew murmurs.

“Hush,” Anthony says, sighing a single note of laughter against Matthew’s brow. He settles his arms around him, fingers spanning across broad muscle and risen bone, smooth skin and strength beneath. “I kept it, that eighth language, hidden deeply within myself. My own thoughts were safe, my own room late at night a place for whimsy, imagining boys from school who might feel the same. We lived in a country estate, you see, far from any sort of civilization, but when they sent me to boarding school -”

“Boarding school?”

“My family was titled,” Anthony admits, though the words stick ugly and thick in his throat. “Is still, I suppose, though God knows what will become of it now. They are moneyed, and comfortable. I was betrothed from the moment I was born to a girl I’ve never properly met.”

“Even now?”

“Even now,” he says, eyes closed. He recalls, what feels so long ago that he almost thinks it imagined, the firm press of fingers up his shorts, the harsh friction rutting fierce in narrow beds. “There was a boy, then, at school. The first.” Of those with whom Anthony has spilled seed. Of those whom Anthony has loved. “He came to visit, between semesters. I was your age, perhaps a little younger.” His throat clicks, brow creased. “My parents found us.”

Matthew reaches to spread his fingers against Anthony’s neck, gentling him, soothing. He pushes himself a little higher up his body to kiss Anthony's neck. He noses against his jaw, cups his cheek and settles closer, and his poet holds him fast.

"What did you do?"

Anthony allows the strangled sound in his throat to issue softly forth, a bitter smile tightening his lips. “I wept. I wept and I told them that I loved him. I said that it was as natural as anything else and my father struck me. My mother sobbed, wretched wracking tears. My erstwhile partner said that I had forced him to it, and fled. I don’t blame him for that. I think that I would have done the same.”

Matthew’s eyes open, watching wide-eyed as pain curls his poet’s features.

“He - my father, then - he asked me if I’d learned my lesson. Do you remember, Mr. Brown, that I said I was proud? I told him that I’d learned only what I loved, and I told him that I was very good at it. I have always been a stubborn, obstinate thing. And he told me that if I could not restrain myself, then I was as good as dead to them.”

Anthony forces his body to ease within the bath. His arms tighten and his fingers splay as if to remind himself that he is here, and he is now, and against him lies another body who has loved him and loves him still. A laugh quakes from the poet, helpless still, even after so long.

“To synopsize a great deal of agony and broken furniture and blows, they disowned me. No longer the heir to the home I had known and loved, no longer their son. I went forth with raised chin and carrying my bruises as banners, as if Wilde himself would look upon me with pride for suffering as he did in Reading Gaol. I have not seen them since, though I wrote to them now and again, informing them that if they did not continue to pay my battels and tuition, I’d have quite a lot to say to the papers. If they know of me now, of what meager things I’ve managed to accomplish,” he says, shaking his head. “Then I know not what they think. Dimmond is not my given name, but one I’ve chosen to stake as my own. ‘Faded world’ or some such woeful bit childhood poetry. They’ve not had me put away yet so I can’t imagine they suddenly shall.”

Matthew watches him carefully, unblinking. He tries to imagine a younger Anthony, proud, tall, trembling as he stands his ground, as he takes his banishment with chin held high and eyes narrowed. He tries to imagine the terror that would have poured through him being told that he was no longer welcome.

"Proud, stubborn thing," Matthew tells him fondly, and arches up to kiss him, deeply, a reassurance and kindness both. His heart beats quicker when Anthony touches his hair, when he hums weakly against him. "Is he one of them?" Matt asks. "Is he one of your letters, that first boy?"

With a gentle shake of his head, Anthony smiles, weak and small and sixteen all over again, facing a great and terrifying world alone. He touches Matthew’s cheek to remind himself he is not. He presses their mouths together in a chaste and simple kiss to settle his heart.

“No,” he says, when their lips part. “I could never divorce him from the rest of it, and it was all too obvious whenever I tried to write it. Last I heard he had married, as he was meant to do, with children and the whole posh mess. It would do neither of us favors to dredge up that history.”

Matthew turns again, from side to stomach, laying pressed against his professor, and easing his too-quick pulse with slow kisses sunk against his throat. Anthony’s hands find his hair, his back, his broad shoulders, beautiful and strong.

“I wrote, instead, about the family that found me after,” Anthony says. “The other castaways and cut-outs, when we seemed to somehow all find ourselves in the sanctuary of Montmartre, beneath the Basilica, as if we were meant to be there. It wasn’t illegal in France, and in that neighborhood in particular we were free, all of us, in a way that even from such disparate places we had never known.”

Matthew doesn't pull away, though the water grows cool around them both. He doesn't shift away from the closeness they have found together. This man, this extraordinary and beautiful man, has horrors in his life Matthew has never known. And he adores him.

"Our games were secret," Matt says. "We would meet in public bathrooms, in booths, back alleys, behind the school. Older men, sometimes. They felt more permanent to me. They felt..."

"There?"

"There," Matt agrees. "Genuine. Real. I mean," he laughs, just a snort, and nuzzles Anthony. "I was never caught, but after a while all the boys I played with, touched, they drifted away. Some to other cities, others to girls, experimentation over." Matt smiles and glances up to watch Anthony. "Tell me about them?"

“In Paris?”

“Yes.” Matthew settles his head against Anthony’s shoulder, arm around his waist, cock against his hip. Anthony rests against the back of the tub, tracing the backs of his fingers in slow strokes along Matthew’s arm.

“I met Tobias first,” he says. “A cellist busking on Rue Saint-Vincent. I recall precisely where, because surely, I thought, with his talent he could have made more playing on Caulaincourt just a block away rather than in front of the cemetery. Of course, being young and foolish, I told him as much, as if he didn’t know. A drier look has never withered me. ‘I’ll be certain to let the conductor of the Paris symphony know’, he said to me. ‘Perhaps we’ll hold our next season there.’”

Matthew laughs, eyes wide as Anthony continues. “A terrible and wonderful creature, Tobias. He said some poncy nonsense about playing a meditation on death, and so it required him to be close to it. I asked why he was collecting money, then, and perhaps he should give it to me if it mattered so little as to be incidental. It was always that way with us, we fought like tomcats, hissing and puffing and strutting past the other. The sex was much the same, to be sure. All claws and teeth.”

“The first of your trollops,” Matthew murmurs, setting the side of his thumb against his teeth.

“We all lived in a house together,” Anthony tells him. “A dismal, dilapidated little thing crammed between two bigger buildings, on Rue Norvin. The stairs tipped forward and back, side to side. The porch often dropped bits of wood upon us if too many of us sat there. There was a couch on the roof -”

“How?”

“Damned if I’ll ever remember. One of us might have gotten it there, though hell if I can imagine how. I liked to think it had grown out of the building itself, sensing our need for it,” Anthony says, reaching for his cigarettes again, though more to occupy his fingers with old habit than for the smoke itself. “It overlooked all of Paris, and in turn we were watched over by Sacré-Cœur. It’s probably collapsed by now - the house, not the Basilica - though we’re lucky with all our fucking and fire that we didn’t bring it down around own ears.”

“And F?”

“Franklyn,” Anthony says. “We met him next. Tobias and I weren’t speaking, some sartorial disagreement in which we wore matching patterns out one night and both refused to be the one to change. And here was this stout, handsome man looking terribly nervous in a suit he must have been given by his father, and I found him refreshing compared to the fops with which I’d surrounded myself at that point. I desired to be doted upon, and he desired to be accepted by all the parading peacock queers of Montmartre. Fools, all of them, for not giving him a chance, but lucky for me I did. Despite a perpetually unfortunate penchant for dressing dour, I’ve met few men in my life with such refined palates for food and drink. I’ve met fewer still who make love with such earnest affection.”

“You were sleeping with both of them?”

Anthony lifts a brow and grins, sighing smoke. “None of us were exclusive to the other. None of us would have imagined but in extreme moments of ardency to ever ask it. There was too much to experience, to many new faces every day once the war hit a boil. All of us were happy to share and be shared. It seemed foolish to limit our love to only one.”

Matt laughs, shivering a little and nuzzling closer.

“Appears I was born in the wrong period.”

“You would have made a killing in Paris,” Anthony reassures him, yet finds himself entirely happy with the fact that Matthew had not been there, not then. A very different Anthony would have invited him to his bed, a very indifferent one would have tossed him from it one rainy morning while choosing a new necktie from his closet. They would not have had this.

“And W?” Matt asks, shivering again, and Anthony hums before gently pushing him up. He holds the cigarette between his lips as they both climb out of the tub and wrap towels around their middles. There is time yet to clean up, but later, and so they drain the water and pad with damp feet to the bed. Matthew crawls in first, beneath the warm sheets, and watches Anthony hang both of their towels over the closet door before joining him.

“Tell me of W,” Matthew repeats, delighted to be warm and close again, here, together. Delighted to be talking, and learning each other. He smiles as Anthony snorts a laugh and shakes his head.

“To know of W you need to learn of H.”

“H, then,” Matt agrees, settling.

It would be dishonest for Anthony to mute the lifetime long pain that touches his smile. He allows it, then, flicking his cigarette against the ashtray, and gives it leave to ease away just as soon. “Hannibal, we met much later. We had the house then, and were comfortable, unaware that a piece of our whole was missing until he arrived. A medical student from a particularly proper family in Eastern Europe, whereas I was cut away from mine, he chose to leave with their blessing to pursue scholarship.”

“And?”

“The ‘and’ came not of intention, I think, but of circumstance. I saw him among a throng of revelers some summer Saturday night, in their mix but not apart. I thought my heart would never beat again and in truth, it never has worked the same way since. Tall and elegant and with a smile that shows only in his eyes, as brilliant in mind as he is beautiful in body.”

“You loved him.”

“I do,” Anthony admits, tapping his cigarette again and adjusting his arm more snugly around Matthew. “I think I always shall. It has been a blessing, for my life would not have been as wonderful without him, and it has been in a curse. We never made it for drinks that night, we saw the other and departed immediately for the bed we did not leave for days. But I was swept up still in the spirit of the time - I wanted him, but I wanted others as well. I wanted us to share but always to return. I have always been a flighty thing. I’m not sure that even with hindsight I could have been any other way.”

Matthew squirms a little closer, pressing his palm against Anthony’s heart that stutters swifter with memory. “He’s the one that hurts in your poems, the ones that made me weep.”

“Then it is by proxy of my own that dotted the page, if so,” Anthony says. “When I needed a friend, he was there for me. When I needed a lover, he was there then, too. When my heart was broken he is the one who mended it, doctor that he is. And then came Will.”

Matthew listens, presses warm to Anthony and accepts the cigarette that is handed to him in the inevitable pause that follows the last letter’s reveal. Matthew marvels at his poet’s ability to speak of his life. None of his stories seem lesser for their lack of poetic turn, he is as capable a storyteller in prose as he is through his poetry.

With a deep inhale, Anthony directs his smoke to the ceiling, bringing a hand up to rub his eyes.

“Will came with the British companies. The accent alone was jarring. Brash and loud, they were, a reminder of what I had left behind. And then Hannibal, my Hannibal,” Anthony laughs, curls his arm around Matthew more to stroke his hair. “My Hannibal saw him and could not look away.”

His throat tightens and Anthony stops speaking for a moment, remembering the bright-eyed boy with shorn hair, a crooked smile much like Matthew’s, youthful joy in his eyes still, having not yet seen war.

“You didn’t hate him,” Matt murmurs. “In your poetry.”

“I don’t hate him now,” Anthony replies, honest. “I think I tried, once, when I had had the chance to be cruel. He and Hannibal spoke not a word of the other’s language, and I interpreted between them. But even then it was jest, never hatred.”

Matt watches him, cheeks warm and eyes bright and only a little sleepy from the hot water. He wriggles closer and presses a kiss beneath Anthony’s jaw, lingering and adoring, eyes closed and breath fanning soft against Anthony’s cheek.

“Do you speak to them now?” he asks. “All of your trollops from Paris?”

Anthony sets the cigarette away to smolder out in the ashtray, and he turns to lay alongside Matt, facing him. Their bodies slot together, legs between legs, arms pressed between or draped above. For a quiet moment, Anthony lets himself feel small and safe within such strength. In truth, he feared these revelations - that envy or bitterness or possession would arise in this boy who has adored him for so long.

Instead, he feels a kiss against his brow, and a hand spread warm against his back.

Anthony breathes, and that in itself is revelation.

“Will left first, after only a weekend with us. Hannibal followed soon after, enlisting as a doctor for the French. Franklyn then returned to Greece, and Tobias said he’d seen all of my clothing too many times to care anymore, kissed me, and left,” Anthony murmurs, though there is a hint of a smile at those words. “He lives now, last I heard, in Italy studying beneath a master luthier, and I’m certain that _beneath_ is the operative word in that. I’ve not heard from Franklyn, when the first few letters I sent were unanswered, I was wary of sending more and disrupting his life, whatever’s become of it.”

“And Hannibal?” Matthew asks, and hearing his name spoken sends a shiver through Anthony that curls him closer. “And Will?”

“They live in Oxford now, together, having somehow found each other after the war. I see them as often as I can,” he says. “Do you recall when I said, that despite my theory, there was an exception?”

Matthew’s smile, his surprise, warms his face entirely, and Anthony sighs long as he nuzzles against him, eyes closed and held warm. It is strange to reveal these things to this boy, to any boy, to anyone at all. Yet there is also a catharsis in it that Anthony had not expected, had feared would never come, should he speak the words aloud.

He feels hot lips against his hair, soft fingers card through it to ease it from his temples and then a kiss there too.

“Tell me again,” Matthew murmurs.

Anthony makes a warm sound of disapproval, but holds Matthew closer against him. “In them, their sex hardly matters. They are as bound to the other as any two beings might ever hope to be, surpassing barriers of time and distance and language and war itself. I cannot hate Will for that, when he has made Hannibal so happy. To see them together -”

The words stick in Anthony’s throat and he works them free with a small sound.

“To see them together, the very picture of peace and domestic bliss, brings into question the assumptions that bitterness has carved into my bones. If they can be so content, matured from the wild frolics of youth to settle in such contentment, why not the rest of us? What harm or illegality exists when they are as capable - more so, perhaps - of sustaining a relationship as any pairing of man and woman?”

He feels his own tension only when Matthew’s skin slides against his own, arms tightening and hand spreading to ease the curl from his spine. Warm hands seek against him, soft breaths puff gently against his skin and Anthony feels at once too small and too large for his form. He feels seventeen again, proud and beaten and terrified. He hates that he could not hold these stupid emotions in check, he hates that now Matthew knows, his history, his secrets, the loves of his life that have fled to all corners of the world.

He wishes he had held them closer, had allowed himself a little more time with this beautiful boy before these stupid words scared him away.

Rightfully.

Predictably.

“They are not the only who have this,” Matt whispers to him. “Not the only that could. You speak as though you’re decades older than you are, Anthony, you’re not yet thirty. What do you fear so much?”

Anthony’s pulse clicks in his throat to fill the space that his breath no longer does. Held in his lungs alongside his hammering heart, he keeps his eyes open as if to dry away the wetness swelling hot within them. He will not weep here, like a child, against a student who in seeking him did not ask to be burdened in this way. He will not weep as he did when he was shoved stumbling from a house no longer his home, as he did when Hannibal strode down the steps never to return, as he has again and again and again.

The strangled noise in his throat betrays him as he parts his lips to speak, and a blink lets loose thin streams from the corners of his eyes.

_What do you fear?_

“That I have built my life upon a lie,” Anthony whispers. “That what has felt natural to me has been anything but. That all the ways in which I’ve tried to love have been doomed before they began, and perhaps had I - had I simply apologized, had I forced my foolish heart to quiet and returned home, I would not be alone.”

He shakes his head and pulls his arms between them to push away.

“That this is wrong, and I’ve been too stubborn to admit it.”

Matt lets him go only long enough to get his knees beneath himself, and sit closer to catch Anthony around his shoulders instead, holding him close. He can feel him trembling, hard, can feel the way his fists press between them because he can’t bring himself to spread his hands. And he knows, lord does Matthew know, how this feels.

“Don’t,” he breathes. “Never say that, love, never think it.” He holds the squirming poet against him until the struggle becomes genuine, and then with a shift and a gentle push of his leg, Matt upends Anthony onto the bed and sits atop him, pressing him down with his weight, kissing his wet cheeks as the other turns away with a whine.

“Your writing saved my life, and opened my eyes, how many others do you think it has done the same for? How many boys terrified of what they think and what they want, who find your words and feel, suddenly, that they are not crazy, not broken, but exactly who they should be.”

He bends to nuzzle against him as Anthony goes limp, lips pressed together and eyes resolutely closed. Matthew kisses the tears from him, rubs his nose softly against his poet’s cheek.

“Had you forced your foolish heart to still, you would not be here. And you would have been alone,” Matthew whispers. “You’re not alone now. You’re not alone, because I will never let you be.”

Anthony’s fingers squeeze to fists, nails digging into his palms. Another twist of his body finds him held, still, by the insistent affection of the boy atop him and Anthony wants to beg him to not let go, to not let him leave, to never let him be, just as he said. Instead, he shakes his head a little, sighing out his breath harsh, all at once.

“And if I was wrong? Imagine, imagine all the lives I’ve ruined, thrown into discord because of what _I_ thought to be right. Wilde himself came to regret his words,” Anthony whispers, his hands uncurling, and when Matthew eases his grip against them, he slips them around Matthew’s neck. A breath hitches short and he buries his face against Matthew’s throat. He wants to beg him to stay, to remind him of his promises, to beg his persistence. He wants so desperately that the words fail. He fails.

He always has.

He imagines that he always will.

“I’m sorry,” the poet whispers, voice thick and tears thicker still. “Forgive me, please, at least in words. You would have done better with the books, alone, with others. There isn’t enough left in me. I’m not worth this.”

“ _You_ are enough,” Matthew insists softly, holding Anthony close and shifting so they both lay comfortably on their sides. He strokes his hair and kisses against fevered skin, soothing and protecting and gentling. “There is nothing to forgive.”

He thinks, briefly, of how he had imagined Anthony Dimmond for all of the years he had known his words but not his soul. He thinks, briefly, of how he had imagined him to be, and realizes he had never imagined Anthony carefree and at ease. He had imagined him strong, he had imagined him stubborn and clever and scalding in his words, he had imagined him just like this. And it warms his heart, swells it, to know that having that realized in the man in his arms now, who trembles and continues to try, to exhaust himself of memories and emotions, is everything he has ever wanted.

“You are everything I have ever wanted,” Matthew tells him.

Anthony laughs, sudden and soft, not with derision or cruelty but with a strange helplessness. “You can do better.”

“I don’t want better. I want you.”

Lifting his head, Anthony presses firm against Matthew’s mouth, easing to a whimper when the kiss is returned without reservation. Fingers called by work and training graze his cheek and wrap through his hair. Anthony feels, despite his insistence on struggle, as his body eases to fit just so against Matthew’s own.

“You promised,” Anthony reminds him. “You promised that when you wish to go, you’ll tell me.”

“If I do, I will,” Matthew agrees, offering a smile that Anthony watches as if it were the morning sun, alight with promise. “Do you remember what else I promised?”

“Foolish things.”

“That I’m persistent,” Matthew grins, rubbing his nose against Anthony’s cheek until the older man’s smile splits into a laugh. “And that I won’t leave you be.”

Anthony isn’t certain what he wants. He’s never been, if he’s honest. Seeking between countless beds and partners within, between cities and countries, he has tried to find again and again what his tempestuous moods desire at any given time, changing ceaseless as the tide. Perhaps, he considers now, that he’s been going about it all wrong. If he can’t be trusted to know what he wants, maybe Matthew instead is what he needs.

“Please don’t go,” Anthony asks, a winding curve of hips dragging the lengths of their bodies together, to meet in a kiss. “Please stay.”

Matthew kisses him back, fingers seeking over stubbled cheek to his smooth neck, lower still to squeeze his fingers against a peaked nipple, smiling when he pulls away to breathe.

“I also promised,” Matt tells him, the request accepted, unspoken, between them. “To spend the better part of my day between your legs, do you remember?” His nose wrinkles as he grins, youthful and pleased. “I keep my promises, Anthony Dimmond. That you will learn fairly quickly about me.”

With a long hum and a stirring between his legs, Anthony nuzzles alongside Matthew’s wrinkled nose, across sun-warm cheeks. Their lips brush and their bodies press, one long rocking movement before Anthony yields, turning to his back. He watches with eyes red-rimmed and adoring as Matthew settles atop him, forceful in presence and body both, and Anthony all too content to be moved by him entirely.

“I have heard your promises,” Anthony murmurs, hand framing Matthew’s cheek as slowly, his eyes narrow and his smile spreads. “Now prove them, Mr. Brown.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“You are my_ enfant terrible _,” sighs Anthony, tilting to rest his elbow against the arm of his seat, fingers fanned against his cheek. “You drink my wine, eat my food, sleep in my bed and still demand a train ticket for your trouble. And this,” he murmurs, voice a resonant hum, low and richly intonated. “Even now your body demands more. You are ravenous for it.”_
> 
> _“For you.”_
> 
> _“For me,” Anthony allows, unable to resist a coy smile as he preens beneath the praise._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

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> 
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_Msrs. Lecter-Graham,_

_Or, Msrs. Graham-Lecter,_

_Or, Dr. and Mr. Lecter-Graham,_

_Or whatever spousal nonsense you’re both muttering into each other’s hair like smitten schoolboys -_

_Before you ask, yes, I take full responsibility for Cambridge’s hair’s-breadth loss to the Other Place during the Boat Race. While our crew’s newest member made a valiant effort, one must understand that he is both young and relatively inexperienced in comparison the rest of the slatterns tugging on their oars. His stroke will only improve given time and ample practice. He is a natural, overflowing with strength and vigor, and requires only the scant assistance of a guiding hand to direct him home to glory._

_We will continue to practice with full and focused attention, as often and as vigorously as we are capable. And we are, rest assured, extremely capable. I hope you will not be overly concerned for us, or that if you are, it stirs you both to your own athletic aspirations and guilty looks are shared between you both._

_I would ask how things are in the Other Place, but I imagine it is as wearisome as ever. Are you growing wisteria again this year? Or peonies, or whatever dreadful weeds at which Hannibal insists on squinting, as if he might intimidate them into growth in place of having a green thumb? Are you due for bed soon, now that the mail’s come and the sun’s nearly set? Do you miss me terribly, with an aching and profound longing?_

_That much, I suppose, is true for you and I both._

_~~As it stands, I sit~~ That is a terrible pun even for me, please ignore it._

_At present, I am watching my brash American, who smiles with too many teeth and laughs much too loudly and readily, contend with bangers on the stove. He is soon to discover why they are called that, considering how long he’s been poking at them. I think that he is disappointed in himself for the result of the race, and for as little as I need a noisy colonial messing about in my kitchen, I need a sullen one even less._

_Perhaps a trip is in order, to see how the other half lives. He wants to meet you both, and I must be unwell as it is becoming less a reprehensible idea to me by the day. Though I am loathe to expose him to your dire domesticated tedium, in fear that he give up on fairydom entirely in seeing its results in your hands, I will approach the endeavor as a personal challenge to upset both your lives as much as possible and give this promising athlete a taste of Paris._

_What do you say? For old time’s sake, and for new._

_Yours, whether you like it or not,  
Anthony Dimmond_

_postscript: he is ravishing when he struts about bare in the morning - and he does,_ always.

\---

“I don’t know how you eat this,” Matt mumbles, legs crossed as he sits across from Anthony in bed and sullenly pokes at his food. The race was over a week ago, now, and still he feels personally responsible for not winning, though no one blames him. Least of all his professor.

“You’re moping.”

“I’m not.”

“Moping terribly,” Anthony repeats, content to eat his breakfast and watch his boy, shifting one foot beneath the blankets to poke gently against Matthew’s thigh. “If you’re not careful you’ll bring the rain on, you pathetic fallacy.”

Matt snorts and shifts enough to be out of reach, smiling when Anthony merely adjusts himself to prod him again.

“Sorry,” he sighs, setting the plate aside, mostly eaten, before rolling to his stomach and crossing his arms before him, chin atop. “I am terrible. Perhaps I should start penning poetry.” His eyes narrow in delight and burn brighter, and there is a genuine delighted yelp when Anthony’s foot presses against his ribs and draws an involuntary response against the tickling.

“I can only cringe, down to my very nethers, to imagine the words you would cobble together,” murmurs Anthony, grinning when his foot is snared. “Ode to an Oar. Sonnet to a Spring’s Stroking.”

“I’ll give you a stroking.”

“Oh,” Anthony sighs, “do you promise?”

“Right across your proper English ass.”

“There’s that poetry,” Anthony laughs, uplifting his plate to keep it safe as he tries to tug his foot away. He turns the bottom of his foot to the mattress, allowing his ankle to be held still, and he offers out a bite of the overcooked banger for Matthew to take between his lips. “Have you tried before? Writing, I mean, not spanking me, though I would encourage that just as readily.”

“I’ll be sure to remember,” Matthew tells him, grinning. He chews his mouthful and thinks on his answer, stroking gently against Anthony’s calf. “I tried once. Years ago, now. Before I found your work, even. I wanted to see if writing it out would help.”

He doesn’t say anything for a moment, with a narrow look and a smile he accepts another forkful of breakfast and chews it pensively.

“My words came out clunky. Nothing poetic about them. I haven’t tried since.”

Anthony folds his legs, much as he can with his student’s ardent grip, a tangle of sheets and long limbs. He leans over the sulking and sweet thing who joins him in bed more nights than not, beside whom he wakes regularly, against whose pulse his own heart beats faster when they come near. Setting aside the plate, Anthony folds himself over Matthew, hands splaying on stretched arms down the length of his back, fingernails curling as he kneads them back upward again.

“We can work with clunky,” Anthony says. “So long as there are words at all, it’s more than most can manage. Besides,” he adds, grinning as he nuzzles Matthew’s temple, “Americans are renowned for being cumbersome with their words.”

“Bullshit.”

“Beautifully worded, my colonial darling,” murmurs the poet, with a laugh. “Fitzgerald’s successor, sharing my bed.”

“And who do you succeed? Joyce? _Proust_?”

“Bite your tongue,” Anthony gasps, as if scalded, drawing back to drape once more against the headboard. “Or if I ever become so aimless, shoot me and end all our misery before it reaches five-thousand pages long.”

Matthew watches him with a smile tucked against his arms. Then he shifts, just enough to face Anthony properly, and gathers himself as a cat would, knees beneath himself, pert and beautiful ass in the air as he wriggles and Anthony watches him, appearing indifferent. With a low growl Matt pushes himself forward in a halfhearted spring and splays himself contented against his professor.

“You want to teach me to write?”

“You can’t teach someone to write,” Anthony points out, arms draping over Matt’s form as he smiles at him. “Anyone who claims differently cannot write themselves. No, dear boy, I want to watch you try again and see that your words are hardly as clunky as you would think.”

“At best,” Matt says, setting a fingertip against Anthony’s lips as the other raises his eyebrows and waits, obediently silent. “You will get a dirty limerick from me. Maybe two.”

Anthony’s lips part and close, curving bow-taut around the finger set between them. Against the tip of that digit, his tongue strokes beckoning, cheeks drawing shadows to their hollows as he sucks Matthew’s finger deeper. His chin lifts; his throat bares. He lets his body slip low beneath his student and watches him through scarcely-open eyes and long lashes as he sucks, languid and blushing, until with a joining garland of glistening spit, Matthew teases his finger free again.

“You speak to my very soul,” Anthony admits, with a sudden grin. “I love limericks.”

“You don’t. No,” Matthew laughs.

“Oh yes,” insists his professor, settling his elbows to Matthew’s shoulders, and folding his arms enough to tease fingertips through his hair. “Were I given the income to write them, that’s all I’d ever produce. There was a young lady named Sally -”

“Stop,” grins Matthew, snorting. “Please stop.”

“Who loved an occasional dally...”

“You, you of everyone -”

“She sat on the lap of a well-endowed chap,” Anthony recites, laughing, “Crying gee, Dick, you’re right up my alley!”

Matthew laughs, unable to help himself, and buries his face against Anthony’s neck with a groan. He is comfortable, and warm, sated from a good night’s sleep and a warm body breathing softly next to him. He squirms his arms beneath Anthony to hold him close and kisses his throat before pulling back to look at him again.

“You’re terrible.”

Anthony grins, wide and bright, and Matt just shakes his head before leaning in to kiss him.

“Absolutely the worst,” he complains, kissing him again, rolling their hips slowly together, the blanket caught between them and neither bothering to move it. “And here I thought I could brag about my lover’s exquisite use of the English language.”

“I do have a fantastic grasp of syntax.”

“And a penchant for distorting semantics,” Matthew points out, nosing against him.

“For distorting many things,” agrees Anthony, tilting his head aside, almost shy, as Matthew presses a kiss against his cheek. “Family histories and lineages, orders of law, professorial expectations insofar as reputable behavior is concerned -”

“Thank God.”

“Thank God indeed,” Anthony grins, his cheeks warm as Matthew bears him down kiss by kiss, until he’s flat upon the mattress. “God and King and country and whatever other forces have conspired to bring this to bear. What do you say?”

Matthew blinks, ceasing his kisses in order to do so properly.

“Clearly you’ve rejected King and country, you rebels, what do you say instead?”

“Shut up,” grins Matthew, and Anthony laughs, deep and rich and long, sinking his arms around Matthew’s neck.

“Entirely, hopelessly American. Kiss me, you brute, before I send you to write lines for me.”

So Matthew does, with a warm laugh and a deep hum, he presses their lips together and their bodies closer, one hand set against Anthony’s cheek, the other tickling warm against his collarbone.

“Would you have me bent over the desk again?” Matt purrs against him. “Taking dictation?”

“I might.”

“And you claim I fetishise you being my teacher.”

“You do. Often and ardently.”

“Just as you fetishise being able to spank me,” Matt reminds him, “and command me, and tell me off. I adore you.”

The words, as always, uncoil within Anthony, expanding in his ribs like breath itself, stretching his limbs long like a cat in the sun. For as much love as Anthony once held in him, spilling forth at every turn, he has always sought to slake himself on the adoration of others. All too rare, considering how quickly he would push it away, but now that it is poured out against his skin from ruddy lips he cannot help but bask in it.

And in the deluge, he is himself refilled.

“And you,” Anthony says, framing Matthew’s face with his hands, smooth-cheeked and strong-boned. “You who invades my thoughts during lecture, whose absence is felt in every tute I oversee. My bed feels barren without you and -”

“And?” Matthew interjects, slowing the flow of poetry, his lips hovering just over Anthony’s own.

“I adore you,” Anthony admits, with a little laugh. He spreads his fingers fanning soft against Matthew’s cheeks. “And I would cherish the chance to see the movements of your heart writ in words.”

Matt kisses him again, chaste and warm, and traces Anthony’s lips with a fingertip again. “Perhaps,” he allows, spreading his legs over Anthony and sitting up against him, holding his flat palm down against his chest. “What were you writing before?” he asks. “When I was attempting breakfast.”

Anthony licks his lips and arches against Matt, watching him lever up on his knees and settle as Anthony does. He is beautiful. He is so stubborn and lovely.

“A complaint,” Anthony says. “To a dear friend of mine.”

Matthew smiles, slow and sinuous, and stretches his arms up over his head before letting them drop again. “To whom?”

“A friend.”

“About whom?” Matt asks next, smiling.

“Another friend,” grins Anthony, and with this weak deflection, he finds retribution beneath the fingers of a beautiful young man who tickles him to sputtering. Anthony twists, attempting escape, but Matthew easily - effortlessly - overpowers him to keep him held, until his laughter turns to gasps of breathless surrender. “About you,” Anthony yields, cheeks blotchy with blossoming heat.

“A complaint,” Matthew echoes, brow tilting upward.

“That part was about them, really. You, I defended admirably,” Anthony says, wrapping a hand around the back of Matthew’s neck to draw him near. He brings his legs up as best he can, squirming pleasurably to feel their cocks brush lazily together, and he sweeps slow and chaste kisses against his student’s cheek. “Your prowess in rowing and in being especially charming, both.”

“And against whom were you defending me?”

“A terrible professor of Oxford and his dour doctor husband,” Anthony snorts, smiling. “Will and Hannibal.”

Matt’s smile fades, but in surprise rather than dismay. For a moment he does little more than blink down at Anthony, and then he settles against him, curled close, watching him with narrowed eyes.

“You’ve told them about me?”

“I have told you about them, it seems only fair,” Anthony reasons, but he is smiling, his cheeks warm with the thought that Matt finds this as delightful as Anthony once found it deplorable. How time changes minds. How time changes hearts.

Matthew bites his lip and releases it, his heart beating quicker where it presses against Anthony’s skin. He accepts the soft hand against his hair and turns into it.

“I shudder to think what you’ve told them,” Matt murmurs, raising his gaze to Anthony again. “And I also find myself endlessly curious what they’ve written back.”

“You’re not cross with me?”

“Why should I be?”

It’s a valid rejoinder and says much about the boy who now follows the bowstring curve of Anthony’s lips with his fingertip. Proud and stubborn thing, Anthony wonders if it’s merely bravado or if he truly does not mind being discussed considering the nature of their relationship, such as it is. Anthony slips an arm around his shoulder and rests his cheek against Matthew’s brow, pleased by his lack of affront either way.

“It struck me as unseemly to consider discussing my feelings about you, with you,” Anthony says, running his hand along the back of Matthew’s arm when he lays it across the poet’s chest. “And so you’ll pardon, I hope, that they’re privy to a great deal of initial bewilderment on my part as to how I had acquired both a student from outside my College, and one so devilishly handsome. From therein I have intimated about the superiority of our sexual congress -”

“Intimated.”

“Declared, in bold script writ over three times,” laughs Anthony, before he settles again. “As well, I’ve described to them the preponderance of my fondness for you, its increasing depths, and periodic cries of alarm at having fallen so far, so quickly, and with such rapturous joy. Even Milton’s heavenly host could not in all their pride have enjoyed a descent so immense.”

Matthew’s breath is a little shallow, his kisses against Anthony’s chest more ardent. “And they? What have they said?”

“That I have become the worst sort of man, the likes of whom we mocked in Montmartre as they crept leering through our enclaves, and that they could not be happier for us both,” Anthony muses, smiling. “Dreadful creatures. I suppose we shall have to visit, and prove them entirely correct.”

Matt looks up then, sits up a little higher to watch his professor. For the first time he feels like a schoolboy. To meet these men, who had forged a life together in Paris against all odds, and these two in particular who had overcome every cruelty of fate...

"I assure you, dour as our doctor is, he is hardly worth how pale you've gotten," Anthony tells him, drawing a hand through Matthew’s hair, stroking a thumb against his cheek.

"You would invite me to visit with you?"

Anthony squints at him a moment, and Matthew finds himself relaxing with such a playful and familiar expression directed his way.

"I feel as though I am about to meet a hero from books I've read, you realize this," Matthew laughs.

“God help us, maybe I ought to think twice about it then,” Anthony murmurs, rubbing his cheek lightly against Matthew's hair when his student nuzzles into the crook of his neck. “We'll all be crushed to death beneath the weight of his ego if you tell him that, especially considering most of what I’ve written about him was in fact an endless ode to his carnal prowess.”

“But not all,” Matthew reminds him.

“Most,” snorts Anthony. “I’ll never hear the end of it. _You’ll_ never hear the end of it. He’ll ply you with food and wine and weasel you into telling him over and over how his cock is akin to Achilles'.”

Matthew laughs again, giddy, and allows himself to be held. He settles and calms, relaxes heavy against his poet and lets the words filter through once more. Anthony wants him to go to Oxford with him. Anthony wants him to go to Oxford to meet his friends from Paris, men whom he had written about. Books and books of poetry.

"I am as Atlas, with holding up the crushing weight of egos," Matthew says at last, shifting to see Anthony properly, to watch the look of feigned shock cross his features. "The rowing team is rife with them," he adds amused, letting a hand skim ticklish over Anthony’s chest before gently tweaking a nipple. "When should we go?"

Anthony’s knee lifts with a whisper against the sheets, his toes curling from a body-long shiver when Matthew’s fingertips graze his chest again. Hands flat against Matthew’s shoulders, Anthony turns his athlete to his back and sits heavy atop. Knees spread and draw together as he settles, rocking unnecessarily in little undulations but to no complaint from either. That he’s considered this at all is a sea change of immense proportion. That he’s considered it enough to have written it already and find himself discussing it now is damn near Biblical. Not once has Anthony bothered to drag back to them the meager scraps he’s snared; not once has he sought their approval in his poor and fleeting choice of partners.

Hot, rough hands press gently to his bare thighs, beneath tangled sheets, and draw Anthony’s attention back to their host, watching with a crooked grin.

Anthony bites back an all-too easy declaration of love and squints, instead. “Propriety would require the letter I just wrote be sent, requesting their interest in such a visit as proposed. We would then wait, perhaps share another few missives back and forth relentlessly apologizing for nothing at all - as per the British tradition - before finally settling upon a date.”

“And if we ignored propriety?” Matthew grins.

“Then we would be terribly rude people indeed, to arrive upon their doorstep approximately three hours from now, with bags in hand,” Anthony purrs, sprawling the length of his body in a long stretch across Matthew’s own. “Especially with the incorrigible implication - both our universities being on long vac - that there are no obligations to give them grace from our intrusion. That would be _terrible_ , Mr. Brown. Absolutely unforgivable,” he says. “How quickly can you pack your things?”

Matthew’s smile is bright, near-blinding, and he snares Anthony around the neck to pull him down to kiss. His heart beats too quickly, his breathing comes shallow, and he wonders how he got so entirely, truly, damnably lucky.

"Thirty minutes," he says, grinning when Anthony raises an eyebrow. "Twenty."

"Excellent." Another kiss and Anthony pushes himself out of bed, striding blissfully naked back towards the kitchen for a glass of water. "I rather enjoy ignoring propriety. The bitch gets far too much attention on a good day."

"Will we go for long?"

"As long as they will have us," Anthony laughs. "Perhaps pack for a week, to be safe."

"I haven't money for a train ticket."

Anthony catches the doorframe and swings himself out to look at Matthew again, expression one of warm fondness. He watches Matthew until the other turns his face, laughing, into the pillow.

"Worry not, child, the tickets will be mine to buy. You pack."

"I'm packing," Matt laughs, finally dragging himself out of bed.

Anthony allows himself the observance of Matthew’s long and lazy stretch, deliberately wanton as he arches onto hands and knees, arms stretched before him in presentation. And as if, as if, the baring of his backside in such a lewd manner weren’t debauchery enough, he turns a grin towards Anthony and catches him looking.

“We’ll see who can give who strokes if you don’t hurry,” Anthony murmurs. “I’ll turn your bottom scarlet.”

“Do you promise?”

“Yes,” Anthony calls back, striding towards the bathroom. “If you don’t hurry, I swear upon my very cock that I will never spank you like the spoiled schoolboy that you are.”

They agree to meet at the station, Anthony with three bags assembled and Matthew with one. They speak, they can have that much at least, but keep safe distance between so as not to draw undue attention. Only on the train, a private compartment paid for, does Anthony first break the invisible barrier between them, as the train heralds its exit from the station with a trumpet-blast of its horn. He slyly works off a shoe, watching Cambridge with interest through the window, and traces the curve of Matthew’s leg with his toe.

Outside, summer is in riotous effect. Students who are staying between terms or in the township punt in number along the Cam. Trees crowd each other for space, straining for the sun, and beyond their leaves, the sky shows cerulean fragments, cloudless bright.

Anthony works his toe up higher, lip held between his teeth.

Matt shivers, pretending just as hard to be watching the passing scenery. In truth, it is lovely, summer comes to this place like an explosion, and brings life to otherwise dark and dull buildings. He does love it here. Much more so than he ever loved Baltimore.

Much more so as Anthony’s toes continue to nudge against his leg and Matthew has to fight not to grin.

He is entirely childishly giddy. He is more content than he has ever been.

He has to swallow down the three words he wants Anthony to know again and again. He’s sure he knows. Love is expressed in so many more ways than words, and both do for the other entirely loving things. He jerks a little as Anthony kneads his foot between Matthew’s legs and bites his lip hard to keep quiet.

A quick glance to the door shows him no one has gone exploring past the compartment, and so, deliberately, Matthew spreads his legs and slips further down in his seat.

What else could it be, truly? What other reason for the particular shade of dusky rose that unfurls blooming bright as spring beneath Matthew's eyes? For the beating of their hearts that both can feel across the gap between them. For the drunk and heady intoxication that dizzies Anthony's thoughts just watching Matthew smile, let alone widen his legs. Nevermind what the scientists say; nevermind the religious.

Anthony knows the word that belies every stirring touch between them and every whispered sigh shared against the other's skin.

And as they rattle towards Oxford together, for Anthony to make introduction between the most important men in his life, he does not bother to deny that word its agency. Nor does he deny the beckoning brow that lifts above Matthew's sage-pale eyes. Anthony leans forward, his heel against Matthew's seat, and reaches for the curtain to close their compartment, stopped only by a single, hummed note from Matthew.

"Naughty," purrs Anthony. He settles back to his chair and in adjusting, the ball of his foot sinks slow against the rising ridge tenting Matthew's pants. He splays his toes, curls them, and traces the outline of pulsing, filling phallus with his foot. Down and up and down again, a long sigh easing free with a widening smile. "What will you do, Mr. Brown, when the ticket taker comes?"

Matt bites his lip and shifts a little closer to the touches.

"Come as well?" he offers, teasing and hopeful both, grinning as Anthony takes a deep breath and sighs it free, hand against his lips as he continues to watch the boy before him, continues the teasing between his legs.

"You are a temptation,” he whispers. He watches the way Matt squirms a little at the word, flicks his eyes to the corridor and back. "Sinful little thing."

He has found in the months they have shared together, that Matthew truly does respond to words as soundly and as keenly as he does to physical touch. There have been nights when Anthony has lain on his side, watching his boy stroke himself to gasping just listening to Anthony speak to him. He is exceptional.

Matthew tenses for a moment, then relaxes with a sigh and sets his toes to the ground, heels against the legs of his seat. Open, presenting, and devastatingly beautiful.

"What else?" Matt asks him.

Anthony coils feline, freed from his other shoe by the flick of his wrist, and sets his heel to Matthew’s leg. A little push holds his knee again his seat, legs spread wide and wanton. His cock grows full and stiff, responding with a pulse to each kneading movement of Anthony’s toes.

“You are my _enfant terrible_ ,” sighs Anthony, tilting to rest his elbow against the arm of his seat, fingers fanned against his cheek. “You drink my wine, eat my food, sleep in my bed and still demand a train ticket for your trouble. And this,” he murmurs, voice a resonant hum, low and richly intonated. “Even now your body demands more. You are ravenous for it.”

“For you.”

“For me,” Anthony allows, unable to resist a coy smile as he preens beneath the praise. He resolutely does not look towards the door, pupil-wide gaze focused through long lashes on Matthew alone. “I’m not going to stop, you know. Unless you close the curtain and lock the door, they’ll find us this way - worse, perhaps, when I go to my knees and disappear your cock between my lips. Do you think we’ll share a cell together in the gaol?” Anthony asks, perverse delight drawing up his eyes as he pushes his foot firm between Matthew’s legs and savors his stifled groan.

Matthew trembles, delighted by how open this is, how easily they could get caught. He is almost tempted. But a game, even coy and playful as this, with his professor, could lead to much more serious consequences should they genuinely be caught. He doubts they would be permitted to share a cell.

He holds his breath and his words a moment more, and then with a laugh, a hand against his face, he bites his lip and asks.

“Please close the door.”

“Oh?”

“Please close and lock the door,” Matt amends, grinning, bringing his hand lower to bite against his fingers as he watches Anthony watch him.

“And then?”

“And then perhaps you can make good on your threat?”

Anthony rumbles a low disapproval as he brings his feet to the floor and his body into the place they occupied. His knee presses against the now-firm bulge in Matthew’s pants; his hands grasp the seat to either side of his head. Their lips meet in a sinuous kiss, dangerously decadent, tongues flashing past parted lips to seek into the other’s mouth and Anthony does not relent when Matthew turns his head aside and watches the door, pulse pounding.

“Lock it,” he asks again, eyes drifting nearly closed as his professor nuzzles his temple and sighs against his cheek. “Please, Anthony - Mr. Dimmond -”

“And if I do not? If they see us here, conjoined in bliss, my mouth wetting your cock, my legs spread across your lap as you fuck me roughly, holding me down to bury yourself, skin clapping against skin -”

“Sir,” Matthew begs, arching up to rub himself against Anthony’s leg where he kneels to the seat. He grinds his hips a second time, flustered, laughing, terrified. “Please, sir, close the cabin.”

Unfurling in languid inches, Anthony draws his leg away first. Feet to the floor, he drapes a kiss against Matthew’s temple, against his cheek, sucking noisy and brief against his throat before pushing himself to standing. His cock now stands, too, obvious and twitching within his trousers as Anthony locks the door, and jerks the curtain closed.

Matthew is on his feet almost immediately, hands against Anthony’s shoulders to turn him, arms draping around him when he faces Matt once more. This kiss is messy, desperate and needy, and Matthew stands on his toes to be the same height - or near enough - as his professor.

“You undo me,” Matt whispers, one hand down to seek between Anthony’s legs, to stroke him there as he ruts up against him. “With your decadent words and your threats and your promises.” Matt’s fingers curl tighter in Anthony’s hair and he pulls the man back, enough to see him, enough to share a smile, another kiss, a nuzzle, and then Matt lowers the poet down, careful to have him keep balance until his knees hit the floor and he rests before him.

Every track clicks against Anthony’s bones, carried up his knees to his hips, jarring his cock, rattling his teeth until he lets his jaw slacken. Tracing his upper lip with his tongue, he tilts his head towards Matthew’s hand and when his hair is squeezed tighter, he laughs, he moans, it’s everything all at once and when Matthew bends him, Anthony goes. His lips part against the front of Matthew’s trousers when he’s dragged against it, fingers fumbling at the fastenings to bare him.

Anthony has always been ecstatic to be anything to anyone, a stern and dominant presence that takes what he wants, a malleable mate to be turned and twisted into any formation between any number of partners. But this, this he loves in particular - a forceful man unafraid to make his intentions clear, raised before him as if a monument to raw masculinity. The poet watches his student, eyes upturned and gaze imploring, and he hooks his fingers into Matthew’s trousers to slip them low enough in spite of his suspenders to let his cock stand free.

“You know, I’ve never shared congress on a train before,” Anthony murmurs, closing his lips to a wet kiss against the side of Matthew’s cock.

Matt laughs, bringing his free hand up to press to his lips to keep the sound inside. It had surprised him the first time Anthony had demanded to be fucked, and now, despite them both being entirely content to have the other take them apart, both have settled into the positions they now hold.

Anthony is beautiful on his knees. As he is beautiful spread in bed, hands against the headboard and moaning his pleasure to the wall behind him. He is beautiful as he lectures, smile always on his face, eyes narrowed in delight, addressing all his students in a way that makes them want to learn.

He is extraordinary. He is delightful. He is Matthew’s own.

“It’s a surprising honor to be your first in something,” Matt murmurs.

Anthony’s affected gasp tilts to a moan as Matthew thrusts against his cheek. One hand on his student’s hip, the other on his cock, Anthony turns his mouth against Matthew’s shaft and curls his tongue, leaving a wake of glistening saliva as he curls kisses against his cock. His eyes glitter in amusement, fine lines drawn in their corners.

“There are few enough of those honors left to be given,” Anthony admits with a brusque laugh, and before Matthew can respond, Anthony swallows his own voice and his student’s cock alike.

Matthew rests his head back, a hand against the seat of their narrow cabin to steady himself when his knees weaken, his other hand still curled tight in Anthony’s hair. He doesn’t force or move his poet; he doesn’t need to, when Anthony is so eminently capable of this and so much more. Anthony’s tongue curves to grasp the underside of Matthew’s cock, stroking along thick veins as his lips snare tight. Cheeks hollowed, he drags sucking back against the delicate skin, up to the head, cut clean of foreskin but no less delightful for it. The corona of his cock pops from Anthony’s lips, left to chill damp in the air for only a moment before heat surrounds him again.

Matthew lets his eyes close and his lips part, breathing slowly and as evenly as he can as Anthony devours him. It is a worship, it always has been; Anthony so in love with the male form, and in particular this male form, that he can do little more than offer himself to it, entirely. Matt has never felt so needed, so wanted and desired, than when Anthony touches him.

The heartbeat of the train eases Matthew’s own and he massages his fingers against Anthony’s scalp, feeling him shift and moan softly, puff breaths hot against the thatch of hair between Matt’s legs.

“You don’t even need words for your poetry,” Matthew tells him, ducking his head to see again, eyes narrowed in delight, cheeks bright pink with pleasure. “You write it with every breath you take, and on any canvas.”

And when Anthony lifts his eyes, there is an earnest and resonant gratitude in them. It is much the same look as when he’s completed a stanza with which he was struggling, warring against himself and his own thoughts and finally finding peace. To be allowed to write as he does, to be accepted to love as he does, is a grace for which Anthony will never feel thankless. The joining of body to mind to soul completes him; without one of those vital pieces, the whole fails to operate.

Anthony’s voice carries through taut flesh in a high vibration, both hands against Matthew’s hips as he sucks, head bobbing, again and again to revel in the thick cock pressing past his lips, the beads of salt that leak against the back of his tongue. The musky scent of Matthew’s groin and the coarse tickling hairs and the tension of his balls drawing tighter is altogether paradise, resolutely masculine and entirely tender. When he draws back, it is with an aching sound and a thread of spit joining his mouth to Matthew’s length.

“I -” Anthony says, the words snarling short. They taste of cinnamon warmth, so intense that a bitterness pervades, and his throat clicks when he swallows. “Have me,” Anthony says instead, licking his swollen bottom lip between his teeth. “Please.”

“Terrible,” Matthew whispers, barely holding his balance, smiling, then grinning down at Anthony before bringing a hand down to stroke himself. “Utterly terrible, Professor Dimmond, this is hardly acceptable behavior for a tutor.”

Matt seeks behind himself with his foot and finds the seat, sitting heavily in it and spreading his arms enough to welcome Anthony into them as he seeks closer, one knee up again, fingers fumbling with the buttons on his pants. Matthew doesn’t help, he watches, flushed and warm and delighted to be the cause of this in his poet.

“Will you stay quiet?” Matthew whispers, lifting his eyes but not his chin. “Or will I have to hold you gagged, so you don’t disturb the journey of the other lovely people on this train?”

Anthony muffles his moan against Matthew’s throat as he leans against him. One arm beside his student’s head to steady himself, Anthony reaches to shove his trousers off narrow hips and down to his thighs where he can work them off in clumsy inches. Finally they drop to his knees, to the floor. In just his socks and shirt, Anthony drags his legs up to straddle Matthew’s lap, looming long and lanky above him, and still somehow wonderfully small.

“You make me weak,” Anthony confesses in a rough whisper, reaching behind himself to grasp Matthew’s spit-slick cock. “And you make me strong. But the last thing in the world you make me is quiet, Mr. Brown, so I’d advise that you -”

A firm hand against his mouth buries the moan that erupts from his throat. Anthony tilts his head back, breath hissing quick against Matthew’s fingers, and without petroleum or stretching, without anything but raw need, he sinks back slowly, knees spreading and body trembling.

Matthew is careful, to make sure that Anthony can breathe through his nose, to make sure that he doesn’t lose his balance on the small seat they share. He doesn’t force Anthony harder or faster, he just holds him and lets him move on his own.

In truth, this is exquisite, it is entirely forbidden, it is so blissfully naughty. Matt grins as Anthony finally settles against him, filled and shaking, panting hot breaths against Matthew’s hand. He gently tilts Anthony’s head so that he can meet his eyes and smiles, just watching him so restrained, held silenced.

“Look at you,” Matthew whispers to him. “Wanton terrible thing. You ache for me as hard as I do for you. You’re trembling, held still and held silent and you _let_ me. What does that say about you, huh?”

There is a hum against Matthew’s fingers and he smiles wider, not peeling them free yet, merely adjusting them with a gentle shift.

“I think,” he whispers. “That you like this, when I do this to you. Wrap you up and hold you still, tell you what to do. Am I right? I think I’m right,” Matt shifts his hips up, lips opening as Anthony’s eyes flutter closed and he breathes a low moan against his hand. “Yes, there it is.”

Anthony could free his mouth with a gentle turn of his head. He could tug Matthew’s hand away, he could profess in ceaseless words and wanton sounds that what Matthew says is all too true. He could, but he chooses not to, body rippling with each twist of his hips that squeezes Matthew’s cock inside him. He chooses not to because it feels so damned good to obey such gentle commands.

He has always loved to be adored; he has starved and ached and hurt for it. As boundless as Anthony’s love pours forth, given freely to a fault, the wellspring from which it surfaces must be replenished again and again and again.

With gentle words and reassuring kisses.

With firm instruction and solid hands.

With hard cock and soft lips and an endless sky of blue in eyes that hood only for him.

In Matthew’s grasp, Anthony feels desired. In his arms, he feels real.

“Faster,” Matthew tells him, and Anthony nods, eyes drifting closed as his breath puffs hot gasps against Matthew’s fingers. He pistons himself down on Matthew’s length, filling his body; he arches in exquisite liquid undulations upward again. A hand rests against his own backside to hold himself wide. The other curls against the cushion of the seat, beside Matthew’s head. And each and every time Anthony fucks himself down on Matthew’s cock, his own swells and spills a clear bead, trickling down his shaft.

Matthew forces his own breathing quiet, his own body still as Anthony works so beautifully against him. He holds his mouth and caresses his lips, down his chin, over his cheek. Loving, even here, even like this. He arches up to press his lips against the back of his own hand, bringing his other to hold Anthony’s head so he doesn’t rock back, bend away. He is beautiful. He is so beautiful.

“Slow,” Matthew whispers, barely steadying his own voice as Anthony’s moans against his fingers. “Slow for me, take your time, let me relish you.”

Anthony sighs a laugh, his voice deep and made rough by this. He could spend the rest of his life just so, filled so full that there’s no space for ill-thoughts to take root, warmed by the light of another who chases away the seemingly ceaseless shadows within him. Penetrated, splayed, allowed to feel another man - this man’s - pulse beating in time with his own, Anthony sets trembling hands to Matthew’s shoulders and brings his arms around to embrace him, burying his voice against Matthew’s throat when his fingers slip free.

Every muscle, every nerve, every sinew that draws tight and loosens within himself plucks notes of pleasure up through his throat, sighing music on every breath. His body aches but his movements are steady, easy as a heart beats at rest. If he could know no other’s presence inside him for the rest of his days, it would be enough.

The thought is like lightning, startling and extraordinary all at once.

And with clumsy kisses and an aching, fussy sound when Matthew begins to thrust inside him, Anthony moves his mouth above Matthew’s own, and clinging tightly to him, he whispers, “I love you.”

Matthew’s breath hitches, sharp, and his eyes widen and he holds Anthony against him as he spills, bright and bursting and hot within him. Those words that he had wanted to say, that he had thought and pressed silently to Anthony’s skin as he spooned him in bed, as he watched him slink from the bed to take a shower… those words that have pulsed through every beat of his heart for months.

He holds Anthony against him, hands hooked over his shoulders, head ducked against him, nuzzling, warm.

“I love you,” he breathes. His hands slide to the base of Anthony’s back, arch him, and one slips to the front between them to stroke Anthony quickly, fingers spreading and pressing together, spilling more sticky slick from the tip of his cock as he works Anthony closer and closer. “You beautiful fool, I love you.”

No one else has loved him for so long.

No one else, perhaps, has loved him so intensely.

And maybe, maybe - Anthony laughs against Matthew’s lips, closing to a clumsy kiss - maybe no one else will ever need to love him again like this.

Maybe Matthew will be enough.

A sudden tension curls his fingers against Matthew’s shoulders and coils Anthony’s toes in his socks. He milks Matthew inside of him with his own orgasmic shudder, laugh splintering into little gasps as his seed unspirals copious and thick across Matthew’s fingers. He clutches against his student as his hips rock and his cock softens. He clutches against him just as tightly as Matthew bares him back across the little seat they share, careful not to let him slip from it.

Anthony steadies himself with socked feet against the wall of their compartment, the chair beneath strumming steady vibration through them both. He marks each third measure of rail with a fingertip touched across Matthew’s face. The tip of his nose and the bridge of it. The freckles beneath his eyes and the center of his lips. His chin and his brow. They lay entwined in the other even as their bodies separate. Neither moves to mind mess or reason.

“Mr. Brown,” sighs Anthony, nuzzling beside Matthew’s nose. “What have you done to me?”

Matthew just grins, sleepy and sated, and nuzzles him back, pressing warm kisses against his cheek. He doesn’t know, because whatever he has done, Anthony has done to him. Made him stronger, made him braver, made him wiser, made him free.

“I made you make a mess,” he whispers, and presses his laughter against his poet beneath him, holding him close. He will stand, soon, go to the shuddering little toilet stall and return with a damp cloth to clean Anthony down with. He will kiss him endlessly, mess up his hair, realize his own tie has been shifted crooked by seeking hands.

He couldn’t be happier.

But for now they curl close, Anthony tilting to his side, Matthew sliding behind. In shocking disarray and even more shocking disregard for it, they fit their bodies together, Anthony’s back to Matthew’s chest, fingers twining where Matthew wraps his arms around his professor’s body. And he is that, professor and tutor and poet and _his_ , his in body and mind and now confessed in heart.

Across their closed eyes, sunlight flickers rapid sparks through the trees passing alongside the tracks. It is still high, considering the hour. They will arrive in time to disrupt supper. As Matthew’s thoughts echo with Anthony’s words and the meeting of his family soon to come, Anthony allows only breath to whisper a susurrus like waves against the shore of his mind. He said the words, and was not rejected. He said the words, and felt them fed back against his lips. He said the truth of his foolish heart and as it spilled from him in raw and bloody honesty he found it held in the same careful hands that now press against him to keep him close.

Anthony could sleep, just so, undone and content.

He could sleep this way until Oxford. Beyond. For years, he imagines, after Matthew’s graduation, until his retirement from teaching. A deep breath stirs him and settles again, and just as Anthony feels the weight of sleep as a blanket against him, there is a bang on the door.

And in giddy fright, both men laugh at the call: “Tickets, please.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“It’s like I’m goddamn dreaming,” Matthew laughs, pressing his hand to his forehead, elbow against the counter. His elders, though they are only slightly so, regard him with uniform amusement. He finds his breath a little easier this time; his heart stabilizes faster. Already these men that he has adored from afar, without even knowing their names, have welcomed him. Already he feels more at ease with himself here than he has anywhere outside of Anthony’s bed._
> 
> _“Poor thing,” Anthony murmurs against his glass. “We’ve gone and broken him already.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta'd by our beloved [Noodle](http://noodletheelephant.tumblr.com/)!

As Matthew's legs seem to shorten, nerves tugging tight, he's certain that Anthony's stride only lengthens. Perhaps it's the innate confidence in visiting old friends. Perhaps it's his own gleeful resolve to make mischief by surprising them. Perhaps it's the fact that Matthew now carries not only his own bag, but all three of Anthony's, too. Two in one hand, one across his shoulders, his own in the other. He would feel like a portage boy if not for the smile that Anthony turns toward him, across his shoulder, and if not for the words that his mouth formed so shortly before.

A gloved hand in the air, Anthony stretches his body to impossible length and elegance, hailing a car for them. He does not immediately enter it, nor does he assist in slinging the luggage into the boot. But he watches, shameless, as Matthew does so, and Matthew in turn observes the delicate tilt of expression that's come over his professor.

His shoulders have lowered from their characteristic hunch. His chin remains raised just a degree too high to be unintentional. Anthony is more open with his hands, more coy with the slants and smirks of his lips. It's akin to watching a blossom first unfurl, petal after petal each in turn, from a tightened bud into resplendent and garish beauty.

"There," Anthony says, motioning out of the window. "Oxford's dreaming spires, all across the university. That pale blue dome is Radcliffe Camera, a library of some sort. Will's College is directly beside it. The bell tower - you see, the tallest one - that's Magdalen College." Anthony leans back in his seat, and with mingled delight and dismay, sighs, "Wilde read his papers there. They have deer on the grounds. It's a hotbed of foppery, from what I understand."

"You're obsessed with him, you know," teases Matthew.

"Wilde? He had much the same effect on me as you claim I have on you," Anthony shrugs, with a glance to ensure the driver isn't paying them any mind. "Making one aware that they are, in fact, not alone in the world, and that there is enormous beauty to be found in the company that one truly desires. Just there, please," Anthony says to the driver. "The ghastly Victorian besieged by lilacs. Thank you."

He slips the driver his fare and with abandon, leans to brush a kiss against Matthew's cheek. This draws an arched brow from the cabbie, who says nothing to it, and pulls a blush hot through Matthew's cheeks.

"Grab our things, would you?"

Matthew does, hardly put-upon - it gives him something to do with his hands instead of having them tremble. Now that they’re here, unannounced, uninvited, where Anthony is welcome and he is not, he isn’t sure he can go in. He doesn’t blame Anthony for his excitement, and he hardly thinks that he has been brought here to be humiliated and yet -

Paris was not his time. Paris was not his place. Here, he is but a boy who read about it in a poetry book and wished.

“Come on, darling,” Anthony calls, as the cab pulls away, and Matthew can do little more than follow. He catches up just before Anthony mounts the stairs and touches his shoulder.

“Anthony.” The other turns, brow up and smile crooked, and Matthew feels his cheeks warming. He loves him. He loves him so much. “I could… I could find a place to stay -”

“You could. You will, in fact,” Anthony tells him, sweeping a hand across his shoulder to cast away invisible dust, and straightening a suspender to lay flat. “You will stay here, with me, and quite often inside of me.”

Matthew’s jaw slackens, startled, but before he can cast another uncertain look to the street, Anthony grasps his cheek to bring his attention back.

“I’d not have brought you if I did not have every confidence that you belong here,” Anthony tells him, an attempt to soothe his nervous student, though he knows the words inspire only more eager apprehension. He brushes a kiss against Matthew’s brow, pats his cheek, and turns to the door with a quick knock - twice, quickly, and then once.

A dog barks from behind the door.

“I will warn you, though,” Anthony murmurs, hands in his pockets and smile over his shoulder. “They are terribly domestic. Terribly. It overcame them both like a plague and there is no cure once you buy a house together, darling, not a single thing can save you then.”

There are footsteps behind the door, a voice soothing the dog down to happy whining and clicks of claws against a wooden floor. Matthew lets one of their bags settle at his feet and tries to straighten his shoulders, tries to look at all presentable, at all worthy of being here.

When the door opens, a beautiful russet hound bounds out to greet them, and Anthony sidesteps him in order to get to the man behind. He’s tall, weight held slightly to one side as a cane rests against the floor, hair a mess of brown curls above bright blue eyes.

This has to be Will.

He immediately moves to close the door again.

“Not interested, thanks -”

“Oh no,” Anthony declares, wedging his foot against it and grinning as Will’s smile widens. “You’re not getting off that easy.”

“But I always do.”

“We can’t all be so fortunate,” snorts Anthony, stepping in to lay his arms across Will’s shoulders, a tight embrace clutched between both. “Although -”

“Yes,” Will says, brow lifting as he regards Matt over Anthony’s shoulder. “I assume this your ‘although’. Matthew, isn’t it? God, let me go,” he laughs, giving Anthony a little shove but not so much that he can’t accept the kiss against his cheek that Anthony offers. His cane clicks as he steps forward, offering a hand to Matthew. “So they finally gave Anthony the boot, hm? Will Graham, how do you do.”

Matt stands frozen for a moment before good upbringing somewhere in the depths of his psyche kicks in and he steps closer to take Will’s hand.

“Matthew Brown,” he says, and finds that he can’t not smile when Will does. He is so charming, he is so lovely, and every word that Anthony has ever written about him radiates behind Matt’s eyes with the utmost truth. “It’s an honor to meet you.”

Will blinks wide behind his glasses, a laugh caught upon a startled little breath. “Thank you,” he says, brow creasing, but not at all in displeasure. “It’s very good to meet you as well.”

Anthony straightens his shoulders and lets them slacken again, preening and pleased, like a bird ruffling his feathers. Will steps back to extend a hand and allow them both in, watching Winston in the yard for a moment.

“An honor,” Will murmurs to Anthony, hand against his arm and a grin secret and small between them. “What in God’s name have you been telling him about me?”

“That you are as valiant and clever as you are beautiful,” Anthony answers, squeezing another kiss against Will’s cheek.

“And?”

“That you maintain the most proper airs of us all and it’s an absolute lie,” he grins, finally stepping in. “I hope you don’t mind us dropping by,” Anthony continues, untwisting his summer scarf, sending a smile to Matthew, still burdened by bags. “Or staying for supper. Or the week. Where is -”

“Hannibal is deliberately hiding from a familiar plaguing presence,” comes an accented voice from a room nearby and Matthew can’t help but stop stock still. Even his voice, Anthony captured with perfect clarity, deep and sonorous, diction perfect, tone endlessly calm. Matthew watches the way Will snorts and rolls his eyes, turns to whistle to Winston to come back inside, turns to Matthew to gesture him inside, bending to take up a bag for him.

“You’re a git,” Anthony sighs, almost breathless.

“You’re insufferable.” The man who comes to the door next is tall, taller than Will, with ash blond hair and startling dark eyes. And all Matthew can say, all he can manage when he gathers his breath, is -

“ _Oh_.”

It’s enough to draw the man’s attention, a gentle smile only in the corners of his eyes, wrinkling in subtle interest and charm both. He inclines his head, but in parting his lips to speak, his words are cut short by Anthony, undone. Arms around his neck, Anthony leans into him with enough force to merit a step back.

“It’s as if he thought he’d never see him again,” Will murmurs, at Matthew’s side. “He only lives three bloody hours away.”

“ _Dearest_ ,” Anthony sighs in French, returning his heels to the earth and pressing a hand to Hannibal’s cheek. “ _God above, I’ve missed you. Look at me, I’m like an old woman_.” They share kisses to the other’s opposite cheek, then the other side, each one lasting longer than they could get away with in public but here it seems fitting, altogether too fitting, to be so near as this. A chaste, warm kiss joins their lips with a hum before Anthony steps back, just enough.

“Do you understand them?” Matthew asks Will, who snorts, shaking his head.

“I’ve taken enormous pains to not learn a word of the language. Dreadful enough just to see it,” he teases, his amusement obvious.

“ _I’ve brought a friend_ ,” Anthony tells Hannibal, fingers fluttering, smoothing down the lines of his suit. “ _I won’t insult us by asking if it’s alright because I know it is. He’s the one I’ve been writing about. I wanted you all to meet._ ”

Matthew feels a tug against his heart and swallows before it can be pulled on a sharp length of envy up into his throat. It is clear how much one loves the other, clear how fond of Anthony Hannibal is. They have an intimacy that comes with time, a way they touch that suggests familiarity Matthew wonders if they will ever have. He turns away before more thoughts can fill his mind with harmful things, and follows Will as he directs him further inside. The spare room they will take - one that apparently Anthony always takes - is downstairs. Matthew deposits their bags there, spends time to find his breath and settle his heart again, and then follows Will's path back through the house to the kitchen.

The room is vast and light, windows facing an immense garden, well-tended and filled with both flowers and fruit trees. There is a long counter, a tall tap, pots and pans of every kind and shape hanging above the large stove. It is clearly a place to gather, a place to spend time and host company, and within it, already, Anthony and Hannibal hold court, the latter tying on an apron, the other holding a whisk and attempting to menace with it, looking beyond ridiculous.

“Matthew." Hannibal’s voice curls over his name like a brook around stones and Matt walks closer as though drawn by a gravitational pull. “I apologize on behalf of the man you’ve brought with you. He has a tendency to forget all manner of decency when he shows up here. Unannounced.”

“Uninvited,” Anthony adds, drawing a finger through the cream still clinging to the whisk and setting it between his lips.

“Always welcome,” Hannibal reassures, watching Matthew as he steps closer. “Although he assumes he made introductions, he did not. Hannibal Lecter.”

“Matthew Brown,” Matt replies, shaking his hand too, watching all of them, comfortable here, close as any family, and wondering once more why he was invited. “I’ve read a lot about you,” he ventures, to the delight of the doctor, who merely smiles with his eyes again before directing them to Anthony.

"He told me it was an honor," Will murmurs, with no small amount of delight. It is a gentle tease, no harm or ill-will in his intentions. Matthew turns a smile to him, brief in its uncertainty but genuine, too.

"One can only imagine the nature of our representations that Mr. Dimmond has exposed," Hannibal says, as Anthony looks between all three.

"You exposed yourself first," answers Anthony. "Frequently."

"And you have finally found a fan of your poetry," Hannibal chides him.

"He had to go all the way to America for it," interjects Matthew, with a small grin, to a brash laugh from Will and feigned scandal from Anthony.

"I see," he drawls. "I'm being assaulted from all sides. Just how I prefer it, in truth."

"Your companion's prurience is familiar enough," Hannibal continues, averting his eyes from Matthew only when his curious gaze draws a blush. "You, less so."

"Nonsense," Will says, settling to a stool on the far side of the counter, and nudging out the one beside him for Matt. "We should show him the letters."

"Don't you dare," gasps Anthony.

"Every other week, another tree's worth of paper, on and on about your cleverness and your talent and your especially broad shoulders. And the poems..."

Anthony curls his tongue around his finger again, another dollop of cream drawn between his lips, as he affects a sullen pout. "I did not come here to be ousted. That was private correspondence."

"And your poems covering the width and breadth of private congress," Hannibal reminds him, taking away the cream with a sly smile. "There should be no secrets among friends."

Matthew laughs, bringing a hand to his lips to press them closed again. It is comfortable here, he is accepted into the warmth of the kitchen without any issue or initiation, yet he cannot bring himself to be as easy and playful here as he is in Anthony’s bed. He finds himself still looking upon these men as something like heroes, as though he is meeting Dorian Gray.

They are both so beautiful, almost ethereal in it, and Matthew can hardly keep his eyes off of one before they slip to the other. He watches Hannibal spoon the cream onto a heavy cake, a spreading knife taken up immediately after to settle it against the top and sides, chiding Anthony in French when he steps near again.

He feels a nudge against his leg and looks down. The dog sits beside him, puppy-grin in place and tail sweeping the immaculately clean floor.

“Hey buddy,” Matt lowers his hand to be sniffed and nuzzled. “You’re not taken in by Anthony’s charm, huh?”

Will watches Winston's warmth towards the boy - and he is that, nineteen at most. It's strange to imagine that at the same age, Will was in France already, and was soon to meet - or had just met - the man who now calls him husband. In memory, he seems older, wiser, but Matthew's youthful pleasure twists a cool recognition in Will's belly of how very young they all were then. How very brave. How very foolish.

How very desperately in love.

"He's a good judge of character," Will tells Matthew, sharing a smile with him as their other halves, such as they are, continue finding their footing in a familiar dance. "He's getting older, though. He doesn't squirm nearly so much when Anthony declares him as his company for the night and carts him off to cuddle in bed."

Matthew looks between Will and Anthony, grin spreading as he tries to envision it. Anthony meets his eyes for a moment; their attention holds for a heartbeat, and with a small smile, the older man returns to his work - or interference, as it more seems to be.

"We saw you, at the race. I told Anthony not to wave but..."

"He did anyway," Matt says. "I saw him."

"I told him he was a distraction, and then..."

"And then."

"How did you meet?" Will asks, happy for the quieter conversation, happy for someone else as naturally nervous as he, perhaps, to speak with. "He's given me his version, but if you're going to be here, I want to hear it from you," he says, eyes narrowing warmly.

Matt laughs, ducking his head, acknowledging the unspoken truth in Will’s words. “According to Anthony” is not always the most practical or, indeed, truthful, version of events.

“I’ll admit, I made it my mission to meet him,” Matthew says, sitting up and letting Winston wriggle closer to set his head against his new friend’s thigh. “When I came to Cambridge, I knew he was lecturing there. Armed with the small drawing he had always had at the back of his books I went looking.”

Will smiles, with his eyes and his lips both and sets one elbow to the counter and his chin against his hand. Matthew can feel his blush darkening and can do nothing about it. He knows he is entirely smitten, knows that when this question would inevitably come up he would not be able to restrain himself from talking about Anthony the way he feels about him.

Delight.

Adoration.

Love.

“Then he showed up at my lecture,” Anthony calls from across the kitchen, keen ears always listening. “And stalked me to my office.”

“Politely followed.”

“And claimed that I was now his counselor, despite being in a different college, and a different field of study -”

“What do you study, Matthew?” Hannibal asks then, turning to watch this discussion, carefully sucking clean the corner of his thumb that had cream caught on it, smiling at Will when he presses his lips together in amusement.

“Nursing,” Matt replies, shifting a little in his seat.

“An unusual choice,” Hannibal responds, “but a valuable one. Far too many men readily dismiss the work that nursing requires, due to the amount of women in the field. They fail to recognize the particular strength of character that such work requires. You don’t seek the gloried title of doctor, then.”

“No,” Matt agrees. “Same reason I don’t want to be the coxswain, I suppose. I’d rather pull my weight and take the lead from someone who’s ready to grasp it.”

Anthony turns his back to the counter and smiles from behind his fingers, muffling himself with his own hand to allow them to speak. The strangeness that he feared, in his own heart as much as in their interaction, has not shown itself. He feels neither torn nor envious, neither obligated nor distracted, much as Will comfortably accepts the need between Hannibal and Anthony to play house again when they’re together.

“You were a doctor during the war,” Matthew says, leaning forward against the counter, but not so much as to dislodge Winston. Hannibal inclines his head and Matt grins at Anthony. “See? I read those poems, too.”

“Wait,” Will says. “So you came from America -”

“Baltimore.”

“- to England, because you read his poems?”

“The scholarship didn’t hurt,” Matt grins. “Oxford offered one too, but he was the deciding factor.”

Anthony sticks his tongue out at Will who can only laugh. “No wonder you’re so taken,” Will tells the poet, as Hannibal watches his other half’s pleasure. “He rowed the Atlantic to get to you.”

“I’m exceedingly lucky,” agrees Anthony, pushing off the counter with an unfurling movement. “And exceedingly thirsty. Let me at least pour champagne for us before you offer him a job, Hannibal. Propriety.”

“I thought we were ignoring that today?” Matt points out, dropping his hand to stroke behind Winston’s ears as the dog’s tail thuds happily against the ground. He watches Anthony’s eyes narrow, his smile tilt and as he passes he gives Matt a wet kiss against his cheek.

“Terrible boy. You reveal too much.”

“Not much to reveal that we've not already seen,” Will calls after him, as Anthony makes his way to the cabinet in the hallway to select a bottle for them to share. “You did show up entirely unannounced.”

A loud clicking of Anthony’s tongue is his only answer. Will turns to look at Hannibal, who in turn looks at Matthew before looking away and taking up the cake to bring to the refrigerator to set.

“It’s a shame you didn’t come to Oxford,” Will muses, and Matt finds himself snorting. Anthony’s apparent distaste - entirely in jest - of The Other Place has been oftimes an argument for a warm cuddly evening.

“Because I am now missing out on the exceptional lecturing and quality of education?”

“Hardly,” Will laughs. “Bunch of ponces in Cambridge. It’s a shame.” He grins as Anthony returns, two bottles in his hands, one that he sets to the counter to open, the other that he puts into the fridge to chill.

“Bollocks,” Anthony answers. “We’re civilized. Well-bred men of intellect, possessing love of science and art.”

“And frotting each other blind.”

“It’s called the Oxford rub, I’ll remind you.”

“Not here it isn’t,” Will laughs. “We call it the Cambridge rub.”

“If rubbing’s involved, you’re not making a good case for me to have not gone to Oxford,” Matt tells Anthony, who grins crooked at the jest.

“You’ve received plenty of rubbing already, Mr. Brown, and at a proper school. Universities are hotbeds of fairydom regardless of their academia. One could go to Glasgow and find it in spades, presuming one doesn’t mind rubbing against sheep.”

It is Hannibal who finally breaks, hushing Anthony with a firmly held kiss against his cheek, and a hand folded over his to pry loose the bottle from his grip. “You both clearly are credits to your schools, elevating the conversation at every turn.”

Anthony watches him pass by over one shoulder, then the other, to seek a corkscrew, looking away again only as Hannibal ducks to kiss Will properly on his way past. He seeks out a cigarette from his pocket, and Matthew takes the opportunity. He produces one of his own, though Anthony’s brand - adopted - and lights it himself before offering it over. Anthony watches the display and folds himself further across the counter, allowing Matthew to set it between his lips. Slender fingers curl around it and he sighs smoke, tilting towards his student enough to kiss him sweetly, chastely, before righting himself again.

“To what are we toasting?” Anthony asks, cigarette aloft and an arm folded over his middle.

“You’re the one that got the bottle,” Hannibal reminds him, giving Will a narrow-eyed smile before turning a much warmer one to their guest. Matthew sits, still, as though he is the odd one out, as though he will say something wrong and find himself rejected, politely told to leave. It is both amusing and entirely endearing to Hannibal to consider that someone so generally put-together could be so deeply loved by Anthony.

Yet all at once it makes perfect sense.

“To company, perhaps?” Will offers, sitting up straighter in his chair and adjusting how his cane rests against it so it doesn’t fall. “Always welcome, that doesn’t need to be invited?”

“Good, we can add that.” Anthony nods, turning to Hannibal next. The doctor shrugs, an incredibly graceful gesture.

“To good education and a truce between colleges?”

“That might be pushing it, but perhaps,” Anthony frowns, gestures widely and turns to his boy next, smiling, eyes narrowed, delighted when he blushes. Matt swallows, pressing his lips together, parting them, and then he takes another cigarette from the pack and lights it.

“To poetic love,” he suggests. “And the walking incarnations of it.”

Will laughs, abashed, but not dissuasive of the statement. He knows as well as Matthew how it feels to enter into this seemingly sacred space, as an outsider first but quickly enveloped by a fierce and loyal love. Hannibal and Anthony share a look, and Anthony with Matthew, the older man’s expression softened ever so gently as he speaks.

“My turn then,” Anthony says, glass uplifted and bottom lip held briefly between his teeth. “To the men that I love, without whom the world would hold no poetry.”

“Sap,” breathes Matt and laughs. With a wink, Anthony drains his glass, and Matt finds he can do little more than simply follow along. Their glasses are filled again, and this time there is no toast made, the champagne is sipped at any speed they wish.

“Was he always like this?” Matthew asks after a moment, and it is Hannibal who looks up with a hum and a smile. “Playful, loud, beautiful?”

Anthony’s smile spreads until it splits, white teeth flashing as he grins, shameless. “Yes, darling, tell him how wonderful I am.”

Will snorts, not without affection, and Hannibal tilts his head to regard Anthony at length as he speaks. “Always,” Hannibal agrees. “And brash. Uncouth, when it suits him to shock. Entirely unraveled at times, coming undone at the seams and yielding his words and affections in exchange for someone he loves to piece him back together again. Tiresome and energetic, vain and striking.”

Matthew nearly bristles at the words, at any unflattering thing at all said about Anthony, but he keeps still. He’s seen what Hannibal describes in vaguery; he has seen Anthony snare himself tighter and tighter in his own thoughts until they sever him. And just as Hannibal implies, it is Matthew there, now, who comes to hold him together again.

“Do not let him fool you,” Hannibal tells Matthew, as Anthony regards them both with an arch brow. “Never once has he said ‘go’ and meant it. Never once has a broken glass, smashed against the wall, been anything other than invitation.” He leans closer, and Matthew as well, a whisper so soft that neither Will nor Anthony can hear it, despite the latter’s dismay. “His love is savage, and worth the taming.”

“I will get it out of you what he said, you know that,” Anthony murmurs, sipping more champagne and narrowing his eyes at Matthew who merely takes a drink of his own.

“Oh, I hadn’t considered that,” Will says suddenly, groaning and folding his arms to rest his head within them. “There are two of them now.”

“And?”

“And what do two do, when Anthony Dimmond is one of them?” Will asks, and Hannibal’s put together exterior cracks with a low laugh and a narrow-eyed glance to his friend. Anthony just rolls his shoulders, and gives them all a very warm smile.

“Perhaps we can have a contest,” he suggests, “of who can out-moan whom from across the house.” He and Hannibal study the other for an instant, and draw breath in unison, only for Will to interject.

“Both of you,” he says. “Both of you could wake the dead.”

“It’s like I’m goddamn dreaming,” Matthew laughs, pressing his hand to his forehead, elbow against the counter. His elders, though they are only slightly so, regard him with uniform amusement. He finds his breath a little easier this time; his heart stabilizes faster. Already these men that he has adored from afar, without even knowing their names, have welcomed him. Already he feels more at ease with himself here than he has anywhere outside of Anthony’s bed.

“Poor thing,” Anthony murmurs against his glass. “We’ve gone and broken him already.”

“Dinner,” Will tells Anthony, and Hannibal beside him. “Before you dip into any more of the champagne. The moaning I don’t mind, when it’s for good reason. Bending over the toilet bowl because you decided to drink yourself into a stupor, I’ll mind very much when it wakes us up at night.”

“Us?” Matthew says, when Will claps a hand against his shoulder.

“Let’s go let Winston play,” Will says, offering a smile as he stands unsteadily and grasps to take his cane. It taps against the floor steadily until a hand catches his wrist, and draws him gently back. He and Hannibal share no words, no questions or explanations, but in their dawning smile is a warm reassurance to the other. Will leans first, his free hand to Hannibal’s cheek to draw him near. Matthew cannot help but watch the curving twist of their mouths made whole together; the flash of tongue between. He cannot help but feel the vibrations that rise in such a gentle affection.

He has so rarely seen two men kiss, as an outside observer. He has more rarely still seen two men in such domestic contentment.

When they move away, Will turns his head in a gentle nuzzle and Hannibal hums and lets him go. Matthew looks to Anthony, finds an encouraging nod to follow, and stands to go as well. In passing their hands catch, fingertips to fingertips, and Matthew smiles, ducks his head and follows Will as Winston leads the way to the back door.

“I’ve never seen you more smitten,” Hannibal murmurs, as he and Anthony watch their better halves make their way outside.

Anthony twists closer, tilting his head to rest against Hannibal’s shoulder, watching Matthew clap and laugh in play with Winston as the door slips shut. Only then his eyes close, and he shivers beneath the warm hands that ease along the length of his back.

“I have rarely been,” Anthony admits. “My list of countless can be culled to very few indeed who have so overwhelmed me.”

“It’s been a long time,” Hannibal says. He turns his head enough to part his lips against Anthony’s brow and sigh warmth there.

“Not that long,” Anthony snorts. “I’ve managed.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I do. I’m being obtuse.”

“Deliberately.”

“There’s no other way. Just as there’s no other way to say that I’ve not felt even nearly this much for anyone since you.” And as if in worry, however misplaced, that Hannibal would think himself usurped, Anthony spreads a hand against his chest, above his heart. He sighs against Hannibal’s throat but pushes no further than that close comfort; it is enough, just as they are.

He could never love anyone more than Hannibal. Equality now seems a possibility, but never more. No one has ever stirred his heart to stuttering failure nor his pen to movement so rapid it tears the page. No one has ever made Anthony feel more alive. And yet this sweet boy, who traversed the sea to find him, who persisted and swore that he would never stop his pursuit, has shaken the flakes from his nib and pushed his heart to beating again.

“My world ended when you left,” Anthony admits, and not for the first time. But now he smiles, small and earnest, and adds, “It is a terrifying and extraordinary thing to watch its rebuilding.”

“Changes are often terrifying and extraordinary,” Hannibal agrees, eyes narrowing as he nuzzles against Anthony. Gently, then, he extricates himself to start preparing dinner, tossing a spare apron to Anthony so he can help. 

The two had interrupted very little of the dinner process. Hannibal had just begun and Will was contentedly reading in the main room with Winston curled at his feet. Now, he takes out chicken breast, onions, peppers and potatoes, courgettes and garlic.

“You’re not afraid to love him,” Hannibal ventures, as much to tempt Anthony into speaking as to find out information from his silence.

“I was,” Anthony laughs, tying the apron on and taking another sip of his champagne. “I tried to loathe him. I tried so hard to loathe him.”

“I doubt you’re capable of something so heavy,” Hannibal murmurs, smiling at his friend before handing him a knife and setting the potatoes before him. “You were always incredibly dramatic in your claims of rejection and displeasure, yet you never once rejected anyone.”

“I did, often.”

Hannibal hums, brow raised, before returning to skinning the chicken.

"In many of those cases - most," he amends, "it was something of a 'you can't fire me, I quit' scenario but that hardly stymied my venom. Much the same with him, in fact. I spurned his advances, I laid unfair burdens of my own past upon his shoulders. I told him I was no longer capable of love."

"An untruth, then."

"I didn't believe it to be when I said so. I went so far as to tell him that I believed, barring you and yours as my sole exception, that being bent damned us all."

"You're not religious."

"And I don't mean it that way. I mean only that our masculine nature, boundless in its desire to conquer and mate, makes quiet domesticity and long-term stability impossible. We seek for what we are not built to share with another man."

Hannibal makes a small sound, pained, hands briefly pausing in their movements before he continues. "That is an unfair burden," Hannibal says, "born of your own past."

"And despite my being a miserable wretch of a man, he persists, as he promised that he would. He sees me as greater as I am. Than I ever have been, truly, but in him my past and present and all in it are exalted," Anthony says, brow creased.

"Our love for another reflects upon them, like seeing the sun in the surface of the sea. When we find one who sees the light within us, no matter how tumultuous our waves, that is something to be held and cherished," Hannibal tells him, leaning near enough to bump their shoulders fondly together. "I haven't seen you this happy, nor this sober, in years, Anthony."

He grins, resting the back of his hand across his eyes, knife dangling lazily. Anthony's blush is boyish and bright; the bitterness long-etched in his features smooths to youthful joy. He sets his blade back to the cutting board, still grinning, and leans conspiratorially close to Hannibal. "I told him that I love him."

Hannibal’s smile pulls wide and then he tempers it. He lifts his eyes to the window where their undoubtedly better halves sit together on the little bench Hannibal set out the month before, while Winston chases a toy Will throws for him.

“And?”

“And I meant it,” Anthony laughs, shaking his head. “I meant it and that realization struck me dumb.”

“Good,” Hannibal tells him, turning to him again. He smiles when he sees how close they stand and leans to nuzzle against him. “That means you’ve fallen head first and far too deep. There is no help for you now. It means it’s true.”

Anthony makes a small sound, fussy and sweetly dismayed. He frames Hannibal’s cheek with his hand and rests his own against the other, sharing warmth and an intimacy that - while it may change forms - will never leave them. Of that much, Anthony is certain. Often, it has been his only certainty in life.

“Don’t say that,” he murmurs. “You don’t know it any more than I do. There’s no guarantee for such things, there never is.”

“You were never so afraid before.”

“Not until you left,” Anthony says, though it’s news to neither of them, nor an accusation. “And then worsening with every terrible headlong dive I took after, as if seeking for the shallowest point to finally end the misery of it all.”

“How is it,” Hannibal asks, “that you have gone to reading literature and not acting on stage? You are dramatic enough for an entire company.”

A gentle slap makes Hannibal smile, and another makes him laugh, and Anthony turns away, feigning offence, to continue chopping the vegetables for their dinner. In the garden, Winston yelps and gently pats Matthew’s knee with a paw, seeking pets of his own.

“Did you train him yourself?” Matthew asks, and Will nods, watching the two of them interact, Winston delighted by the new company, turning his head into the petting, letting his eyes close in doggish joy. His tongue peeks from between his lips in brief little licks and he whines happily.

“I found him, this filthy little bundle of mud, in one of the cottages we passed. Took him with me. He clung to me like a limpet for a while, I was almost going to name him as such but… a proper British dog needs a proper British name.”

Matt laughs and gently shakes Winston’s muzzle before taking up the toy to toss for him again. The dog careens off and Matt turns to look at Will instead. The man he’s read about, in shockingly accurate detail, down to the freckles that only appear when his skin flushes or in the late afternoon sun. He is beautiful, entirely, and just as wholly, Matthew is awed.

“Do you read the poems he writes about you?” Matthew asks, accepting a cigarette from Will with a polite nod. He leans to take light from the match, too, forcing a cough to muffle from the harsh burn. Will glances at him, brows raising, at the sound, but there is a smile yet lingering in his eyes.

“Not quite primroses, are they,” he says, stretching his right leg long in front of him. “Yes, I read them. All of them, though, not only the ones about me. Those I prefer to skip but for Hannibal’s insistence on reading them aloud to me at inopportune moments.”

Matthew grins, quietly filing this away with every other mote of information he’s gathered already, bits and pieces to fill in the blanks of stories and personages he’s known - until now - only as legendary myth.

“He sends us a copy of his books whenever he releases a new one. Spreading his creative seed, he calls it, and I’ve no doubt that the implications are deliberate,” Will muses. “He’s not published a new one in some time, but he’d send us raw works along with his letters, all marked up along the margins with creative venom. He’s like Saturn eating his children,” Will says. “Or so he has been, until recent months. He couldn’t be paid to stop writing - put in the gaol he’d probably draw his own blood and write limericks on the walls mocking the size of his jailer’s cocks.”

“What’s he doing with them?”

“Squirreling them away, I imagine,” Will says. “I reckon we’ll see a book by the end of the year, at this rate.” He winces a little, leaning forward to take Winston’s toy back, but Matthew intervenes to grasp it and hand it to him.

Will smiles, that warm thing that mirrors Hannibal’s just in his eyes and barely touching his mouth. It’s extraordinary. Matthew wonders if he can ever possibly do something as endearing and divine. But he smiles too widely and laughs too loudly and inserts his drawling accent where there should be high diction and clever words.

He feels unworthy of the pages penned against his back that Anthony had called truly inspired. He doesn’t know what to do.

“I didn’t think this would ever happen,” Matt admits after a moment, leaning back and sighing out a plume of smoke towards the sky.

“More books?”

“Meeting him,” Matt clarifies, smiling. “Meeting you. Believe it or not, I thought you, all of you, imaginary. No human being could be as perfect as how Anthony described you all. I was incredibly jealous to learn you were actual people he had lived with, and loved, when he told me.”

“God,” laughs Will, not at all derisive, but gently overwhelmed by the brash admission. His cheeks warm, and Matthew watches as his freckles darken just visible beneath his eyes. He envies those, too. “You’re very sweet. I don’t mean that as a platitude, only that… That’s rather his job as a poet, isn’t it? To capture a moment and share the sensation of it with those who couldn’t be there. But perfection - that’s far from truth, and says more to his own perception than anything. Flattering git.”

Matthew’s brow creases a little deeper. “But it’s easy for you to dismiss it, you got to live it, actually experience it -”

Will draws a breath in thought and Matthew quiets at the sound, as gentle realization lifts Will’s brows again. Matthew wasn’t there and there is a world within that time that expands far beyond even Anthony’s skilled way with words. He clears his throat and ashes his cigarette, lifting a hand to give Matthew leave to toss the toy away again for Winston.

“I was not a part of their life,” Will says. “Not in the way it must seem, though I’m touched always that he seems to consider me to have been. A weekend, only - three days and four nights on leave. I felt much as you, now, when they dragged me into it. It was beyond my comprehension that men such as they could live so openly and love so freely. Never once growing up here did I think it possible. Hell, the thought of that thought never occurred to me.”

Matthew listens, his whole body angled towards Will as he speaks, a leg drawn up onto the bench to better face him.

“I was deeply envious of their freedom - the lives they were allowed to live that I never was. Envious, too, of Anthony for his sway over Hannibal’s heart, and he of me for mine. It was a glimpse of heaven between long stays in hell and for my certainty in intending to return to Hannibal, part of me knew that once I left, there was just as much - if not more - chance that they would pair off again and I’d be a pleasant memory of a weekend long past.”

Matt holds his breath and just watches. This beautiful man with whom Hannibal is so clearly, entirely, blissfully in love. How could he possibly think that he would not wait? That he would not follow? How could he think that -

But he thinks of the warmth in the kiss Anthony and Hannibal shared, thinks of the comfort sought in the other’s embrace, of the familiarity with inside jokes and gentle teasing. He had imagined them, as well, upon reading the poetry, together in bed. They would be exceptional lovers together, they certainly were.

He lets his breath out with a sigh and shakes his head, forcing a laugh to push past the lump in his throat.

“They’re so -”

“Intimate?” Will offers, and he knows from the little pained sound that Matthew makes that he’s struck reasonably close to center. Will hums a little, an ache in his chest like the memory of an old injury, recalling a discomfort from long ago. “I know. It took me a long time to understand it and I’m still not certain that I do, entirely. To call it love would add an impetus to their nearness but I’ve yet to find another word for it. They do love each other, deeply. Before them - before all of this - I’m not sure I could have grasped that such a feeling isn’t strict, to be reserved for one only and rejecting all others.”

“How can you stand it?” Matthew asks, a tired laugh on his words, and Will offers him a smile.

“Because it isn’t the same as what Hannibal feels for me. It isn’t the same as what Anthony feels for you. The bond they share is their own, tender and deeply felt, but harmless to us. To ask that they sever the connection they’ve shared for so long, to mute the communication of their touch, would be akin to handcuffing. Blindfolding. Unsustainable and unfair considering the depth of their love for us.”

Matt shakes his head and Will sighs, struggling to find the words for what he too spent so long seeking to define. “Were you to ask him to choose - were I to ask Hannibal - they would choose us,” Will says, flinching a little as he adjusts to turn towards Matthew, sharing softly spoken words with him alone. “But it would lessen them. They would ache, half-formed, without the other. You must know, and trust, and believe me when I say not to test it.”

Matthew laughs, a weak sound, and turns to look over his shoulder through the window, where the man he loves, and the man Will does laugh together like children as they prepare dinner.

“I wouldn’t dream of pulling them apart, I just…” He feels like a child, suddenly, hates that he put this on Will the day he met him. Surely he had thought Anthony’s choice in partner better than this, a petulant child and nothing else. “I feel as though perhaps I have walked into a scene already set, with actors already cast, and have attempted to make a space for myself among them.”

“No,” Will tells him, and Matthew turns back to blink at him as the other brings the cigarette to his lips again and takes a long drag. “Anthony Dimmond, promiscuous though he once was, is a man who knows his worth, and who knows the worth of the company he keeps. Believe me when I tell you that had he no interest in you, or felt you the third wheel he would have found a way to sever the connection.”

“What if I didn’t listen?” Matt challenges, but his heart feels lighter. He watches Will’s eyes narrow.

“Would hardly matter if you listened or heard. Had Anthony decided, the decision would be made known.”

And then Matthew laughs, relief and heat pooling on his cheeks as he brings a hand to his face to press to it. He had worried, some nights, in utter horror that he had coerced Anthony into this, that he had, with his demanding persistence, put upon him such a chore as to have Matthew with him as long as Matthew clung on.

“I’m sorry,” Matt says at last. “Thank you.”

Will tilts his head, accepting the thanks, but an amusement narrows his eyes as he claps a gentle hand to Matt’s shoulder. “It’s been years,” Will tells him, “and years since Anthony has found someone new in his life that he’s wanted to keep. Not once has he brought anyone here to meet us. Hell, he’s not even given us names so much as epithets for whatever hapless or offensive creature he’d taken in for a shag. They aren’t easy to understand,” Will admits, “but few things worth knowing are.”

There is a clamor from the kitchen, a pan ringing against the tile floor, a curse, a burst of laughter. Matt glances towards the house and Will sighs, patient. He takes up his cane and stands, stretching as Matt rises beside him.

“Welcome to the ensemble,” Will tells him with a grin, as they turn to head back inside.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Darling,” he murmurs, spreading his hand across his face. “Sweetness, my love. I have to tell you something.”_
> 
> _Fingers hooked against his suspenders, Matthew pauses, frozen for an instant. He draws a breath to tell Anthony to tell him quick what he’s done, to tell him to go; he draws a breath to tell him not to speak of whatever secret trysts happened in their earlier, brief separation._
> 
> _“Tell me,” Matthew whispers._
> 
> _Anthony spreads his arm across his eyes and grins, arching upward against nothing but air and the blissful sensation of his own clothing. “I confess that I may have had a little too much to drink. Will you ever forgive me?”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta'd by our beloved [Noodle](http://noodletheelephant.tumblr.com/)!

Dinner is a delicious roast chicken, pan-seared courgettes and sweet onions, baked potatoes and pumpkin. And bottles and bottles of champagne. Matthew wonders, after they pop the third open with a collective cheer, if they stock up in preparation for unexpected arrivals like Anthony Dimmond. But he’s hardly complaining.

Matthew is treated to anecdotes and reenactments of times in Paris, times before it. Everyone, by the end of the evening, is giggling into their dessert, eyes bright and faces red, and Matthew has never felt more at home, or more welcome, among any other people. He clears the table with Hannibal, as Anthony and Will retire to the main room to drape over couches and talk, and though the conversation between Hannibal and Matthew is quiet, it is comfortable.

“Gentlemen,” Anthony announces, peeling himself from the sofa. “Darlings. I must take the boy to bed, it is a school night.”

“It’s long vac,” Matt complains from the doorway, and Will snorts into his hand. Anthony casts them both a haughty look before crooking his finger slowly at Matt, smile spreading drunk and sleepy against his lips.

“Come here, you terrible boy. I want you in my bed.”

“Growing old, Dimmond,” Hannibal murmurs, amused. “Leaving us at such an early hour.”

“It’s nearing one in the morning, Doctor, I would have you know,” Anthony declares, and Hannibal kisses his cheek as he passes. “And I did not say I would be sleeping with my boy.”

“Anthony -”

“I think I might fuck him,” Anthony decides, and Matthew snorts as Will does, burying his face in his hands and going obediently when Anthony sweeps him up in an embrace to near-waltz him down the hall to their shared room.

“Perhaps tomorrow I could make breakfast?” Matthew calls, and Hannibal hums a pleased agreement. They wish each other goodnight and then Anthony closes the door, pinning Matt up against it.

“You’re drunk,” Matt whispers, grinning, and parts his lips for the sloppy kiss that comes as his answer.

“I’ve changed my mind,” Anthony shouts to the closed door, his voice carrying into the house beyond as he thumbs daintily across his bottom lip. “I’m going to let him fuck me instead.”

“Which surprises absolutely no one,” Will calls back.

The poet snorts laughter against Matthew’s throat, but the sound quickly deepens to a hungry hum as his lips close sucking against his student’s pulse. A hand lifted is quickly caught, and the next in turn, and Matthew can only moan as Anthony pins his wrists in place above his head. Fingernails curl and drag down the front of his shirt, snapping a suspender, and Anthony watches Matthew’s mouth slacken with another beautifully wanton sound.

“Good,” Anthony sighs, leaning in to nuzzle alongside Matthew’s nose. “I want to hear you.”

“You’re awful,” Matthew whines against him and parts his lips wider when Anthony’s hand slips between his legs to stroke him up. They are both tired, filled with sweet wine and good food, comforted by good company, and now -

“I don’t know if I can get it up,” Matt snorts, leaning forward to kiss Anthony again. “Might have to -” Another kiss, another little moan as he squirms against the hand that squeezes him harder. “Give you a bloody good fingering instead.”

“Damn,” Anthony laughs, releasing Matthew’s hands to clasp him by the back of the neck instead. “We’ll see if I can - that’s why I volunteered so valiantly to be fucked speechless by you.”

Their mouths collide in a crashing, champagne-bright kiss. It’s as if the booze’s bubbles are singing through their veins, tickling quickly as step by step they stagger backwards - and forwards, in Matt’s case - towards the bed. Their kiss remains tangled, Anthony does not relent the firm press of his palm against Matthew’s cock, not until the bed comes up suddenly against his knees and he spills backwards with a laugh.

“Darling,” he murmurs, spreading his hand across his face. “Sweetness, my love. I have to tell you something.”

Fingers hooked against his suspenders, Matthew pauses, frozen for an instant. He draws a breath to tell Anthony to tell him quick what he’s done, to tell him to go; he draws a breath to tell him not to speak of whatever secret trysts happened in their earlier, brief separation.

“Tell me,” Matthew whispers.

Anthony spreads his arm across his eyes and grins, arching upward against nothing but air and the blissful sensation of his own clothing. “I confess that I may have had a little too much to drink. Will you ever forgive me?”

Matt huffs his breath out in one loud groan and gently slaps against Anthony’s thigh, enough to make him laugh and moan in equal tangled measure.

“Terrible,” Matt tells him, slipping his suspenders down his arms, letting them dangle at his thighs. “Decadent and debauched thing, what am I to do with you?”

“Everything,” Anthony tells him, arching up again, feet against the edge of the mattress as he watches his boy unbutton his shirt and yank it over his head to toss away. “You are such a temptation.”

“Oscar Wilde had a lot to say about temptation,” Matt tells him, bending to yank off Anthony’s shoes, crawling over him to kiss him into the bed before he can protest, or worse, elaborate.

Anthony all but purrs at the words, catnip to him to cite that name, as Anthony imagines - grandly, extravagantly - Matt might feel towards him. It’s absurd, nearing heresy. He’d never allow such thoughts were he sober, but he isn’t and in the moment it feels wonderful to imagine.

It feels more wonderful still to have hot skin and flushed kisses sunk heavy against him, as Anthony squirms delighted beneath. He grasps Matthew by his short-shorn hair and tugs their mouths apart, lips scarlet and shining with spit, messy and delighted.

“The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it,” Anthony recites, his body curving upwards in a sinuous, slinking gyration against Matthew. “I can resist everything except temptation.”

Another kiss quiets his words, but not his voice, all but whimpering as their tongues lick slick together in the joining of their mouths. Anthony spans his hands down Matthew’s neck, over broad rower’s shoulders and down the twitching muscles of his back. When his palms crest the rise of Matthew’s backside, Anthony squeezes, rapturously moaning, and drags his legs up alongside Matt’s hips.

“Tell me you’ll be my faithful Robbie Ross, at least,” Anthony murmurs. “And not treacherous Bosie.”

“I will worship your name in sighs, as long as I can make them,” Matt promises, drawing the flat of his tongue up the side of Anthony’s neck to bite lightly at his earlobe, tugging it until the poet moans and trembles beneath him, growing harder despite the champagne's best efforts to keep him entirely flaccid.

“Perhaps we will share a gaol cell,” he moans, raking his nails down Anthony’s chest before pulling his shirt from his pants and sliding his palm hot beneath. “And make such a racket as to incite a riot in our name.”

Matthew catches another moan before it can echo against the walls and kisses Anthony harder against the bed, slipping his legs between the poet’s own, rutting against his knee lazily as he pushes his own against Anthony’s crotch.

“I’ll be your Ross,” he breathes. “Don’t you ever doubt it.”

The words intoxicate stronger than any champagne or any liquor; stronger than anything any other might whisper to Anthony in lurid and premature declarations. His moan aches with abandon as he curls helpless to the stalwart heart that seeks to join his own with pounding pulse, chest to chest, ribs to ribs.

“What have I done to find myself so fortunate?” Anthony wonders, his entire body alive and coiling against Matthew’s own. “How am I, of all unfortunate creatures, so bloody lucky?”

He bends his body from the bed and Matthew yields, turning to his back as Anthony wraps around him. Lanky legs spread wide against the bed as the poet sits astride his student, long body twisting in a curving caress from kiss to hands to hips to cock. He reaches for his shirt buttons but finds Matthew’s hands there already, smiling into their kiss as Matthew bares him.

“You’ll never leave me,” Anthony asks, breathless. Matthew shakes his head, and Anthony grins, pressing his palms to Matthew’s cheeks as he sinks into another kiss. “You’ll love me, always, as you have for so many years already, and you’ll let me love you, too?”

“In sickness and in health, ‘til death do us part,” Matt snorts, arching to kiss Anthony as he slips his shirt from his shoulders. “Silly man. So talented, yet so entirely clueless, aren’t you.” He ducks his head to suck a mark dark against Anthony’s neck, brushing his teeth against it as he moans.

“I love you now,” he whispers. “Loved you then. Will love you always. Now get these off.” Another slap to Anthony’s thigh and a wide grin and Matt brings his hands down to work the buttons on Anthony’s pants.

Anthony swears, a litany of curses spoken as a prayer of rapturous delight. He’s still hardly hard but it doesn’t matter, and he twists, writhing, to divest himself of his trousers and kick them clumsily to the floor. Bending back, body bared, he tugs off his socks and fully nude, lays low again to rub the length of his body against Matthew’s own. It is this he loves most, the particular press of muscle against muscle, bone against bone, male body against male body. His own is slight and always has been, never particularly strong or prone to any athletic prowess. But Matthew, by compare, is a Grecian god, a sporting youth fit for carving into marble to capture forever the pristine tension of his body as perfection incarnate.

Anthony is drunk. He is very drunk, and he laughs without explanation as to the swirling miasma of grandeur in his own thoughts. Matthew grins and doesn’t ask, content to be worshipped by Anthony in breath and body as the older man writhes languid against him.

“I’ve been writing about you,” Anthony whispers, when their mouths brush but do not cinch into a kiss. Lips grazing, Anthony’s eyes hood heavily beneath long lashes as he watches his student beneath. “Torrid, terrible things. Obscene and beautiful. The Americans will surely burn it if it reaches their shores. I’m certain Joyce will have nothing good to say about it, the little Irish pervert. It’s not nearly obtuse enough for his tastes.”

“Did you call me Adonis again?” Matt murmurs, lifting his hips as Anthony works his pants off next. He is half-hard and warm, beautiful, and Anthony takes his time to bare him inch by agonizing inch. “Hyacinth? Ganymede?”

“Trouble,” Anthony tells him. “I called you trouble. Tempest. Tempter.”

“Yours,” Matthew purrs, and bites his lip as Anthony ducks his head to suck his nipple, lapping at it with his tongue before he presses his teeth just lightly around the nub. “Your tempest, your storm, _fuck_ -”

He drops his hand between his legs to stroke again, hoping for any youthful strength or concentration to be able to get it up. Anthony ducks his head, watching past the glimmers of skin on Matthew’s belly that twitch tighter, muscles carved deep and perfect. He watches past the tuft of curly dark hair between his legs. He watches Matthew’s hand curve around his own cock, stroking it in quick little jerks that from Anthony himself pull a moan.

He thinks of how Matthew says he touched himself to even the thought of Anthony, tugging himself just so, and his moan spills heat across Matthew’s chest.

“On the bed,” breathes Anthony. “Higher, go.”

Matthew listens, pushing his heels against the edge of the bed and giving space for Anthony to move. Teeth and lips and tongue mark a trail down Matthew’s body, hands splayed clutching against his chest. Relentless in his seeking, eager for the taste of salt and sweat against his tongue, Anthony leaves a wake of goosebumps and savage kisses behind himself as he moves downward, further, further…

And with a curse, his knees slip from the bed and he falls with a thump to the floor, eyes wide.

Matt pushes himself up on his elbows and almost immediately slips back down again, his snort hard enough to shake him.

“Your wooing, sir,” he comments, “is wanting.”

“Nonsense,” Anthony gasps, scandalized by the accusation. He spares a forlorn glance to his own limp cock, tragically lacking despite his every intention, but then rights his eyes to the boy before him, legs spread beautifully. “I will prove my worthiness.”

“You’re on the floor.”

“From the gutter to the stars,” murmurs Anthony, dragging his legs beneath himself to sit on his knees. He places his hands against Matthew’s legs, and traces his tongue along the inside of Matthew’s thigh. Coarse hairs curl against his lips and he worships with abandon the taut, sinewy muscles and tender skin. His lips part against the velvet-soft wrinkles of Matthew’s balls and he sighs heat enough that they draw up in anticipation.

Anthony draws a breath, and his voice carries loud as he announces, “I’m going to perform fellatio now!”

There is a thump above them, intention clear for him to silence himself, and Anthony grins.

“Jealous,” he laments. “Always entirely jealous.”

He looks at Matthew and finds his boy with his face buried in his hands, shaking from laughter, skin pink with humiliation. He watches him a moment, beautiful like this, drunk and happy and pliant, cock listening to his desires unlike Anthony’s own. Though, he recalls, it had come through many a time for him in Paris when he found himself in a similarly inebriated state, and too many wonderful men around him to simply head home alone.

“I’d defy the bloody gods if they tried to take you from here,” Anthony murmurs, caught in his own beautiful fantasy, intoxicated by the utterly masculine smell of Matthew before him. He nuzzles the boy’s thigh again. “Beautiful creature, as you defy reality.”

“If you don’t shut up I’ll come just from listening to your damn poetry,” Matt moans, arching his back, spreading his knees wider, drawing them up. “Put your mouth on me for a minute.”

“I love it when you tell me what to do,” murmurs Anthony, before obeying entirely. He traps Matthew’s cock between his thumb and forefinger, circling it firmly. The tip of his tongue teases lightly against the slit of Matthew’s cock, a revelation of taste teasing a moan from the poet. Sweat and the slick that precedes semen and musky masculinity dizzy Anthony enough that he closes his eyes, lips parting in a pretty curve to suck softly on Matthew’s cock.

The pulse that echoes Matthew’s moan stiffens his length in Anthony’s mouth. Head bowed, he curls his tongue to surround the bottom of his student’s cock, and with gentle nodding, he suckles a steady rhythm against him. His cheeks hollow on a firm pull from base to tip, and back down again until pubic hair tickles his nose. Anthony is entirely capable of being anything to any man, but this - this in particular, the submission and yielding, the giving of pleasure in exclusivity, sings in his very blood.

Matthew presses a hand against his mouth to keep his moans inside, and lets his eyes close. Even drunk to the point of losing his balance, Anthony worships Matt like he is the most exquisite being in the world. He takes his time to take him deep, then to pull away and just tease the head. He knows Matthew's body well, now; knows when to push and when to give, how to tease so he trembles on the edge of orgasm for what feels like hours.

But not tonight. Tonight Anthony wants a sound fucking and a good night’s rest, pressed lazy and languid over his student. He pulls off just as Matt’s voice raises to plead for mercy and kisses up his stomach and to his chest again. Matt’s fingers tangle in the silver streaks in Anthony’s hair and tug him closer, head still back, teeth gritted in pleasure.

“Fuck,” he whispers.

“Can you?” Anthony grins, punished with a languid, tangling kiss as he’s turned to the bed. Matthew tilts atop him and rocks downward, his cock grudgingly stiff, and in that, a marvel to Anthony who seeks to tease with fingertips between them.

“I’m dizzy,” laughs Matthew, and Anthony wraps his arm around Matthew’s neck to keep him close, nuzzling his cheek with a wide, sleepy smile.

“Your fingers, at least,” pleads the poet, grinning crooked. “Let me feel you inside me, Mr. Brown, if only that way.”

Matt curses, grinning, and brings his fingers to Anthony’s lips to push them out of shape before allowing two to be sucked into the wet heat that had so deliciously teased his length. He will think it forever, Matthew considers, but Anthony is an exceptional lover. Attentive and hungry and greedy and giving. He is delightful.

“Spread,” Matt tells him, gasping in pleasure as beneath him, the poet moves, drawing his legs up around Matthew, eyes hooded but not closed as he watches. Matt takes his time pulling his fingers free, one by one, before drawing them warm and slick down the center of Anthony’s chest and down lower, between his legs.

“You are incorrigible,” Matthew praises him, parting his lips in sympathy as Anthony’s own part on a low, deep moan, as Matt pushes the first finger in. “Insatiable.”

“I won’t deny it,” Anthony proclaims, when his breath lasts long enough for him to speak. He snares a heel against Matthew’s back, his other leg splayed wide against the bed. Wanton and reckless and wonderful, it will never cease to be a thing of awe to Anthony that he can be this way with another who does not hold it against him, who does not seek to hurt or reject, but who seeks to share such pleasure and love him with abandon.

Another finger joins the first and Anthony’s lips quiver parting on a helpless sound, sweet and soft. “Lucky me,” he murmurs, wrapping his other arm around Matthew’s neck and holding him close, “to have found someone who can sate me so entirely.”

“God, I love you,” Matthew tells him, settling against Anthony as he fingers him open, watching from where he lays against the poet’s chest the way Anthony’s cheeks color, how his lips part and his eyes close in pleasure.

He is a work of art in himself, something stunning and irreplaceable. Unique and fragile and beautiful.

“Can you take three, hmm?” he breathes, the question rhetorical as immediately after he presses into Anthony with another finger and spreads them slowly as he pulls them free again. A whimper comes as his answer and a groan his reward when he twists all three deep once more. Beneath him, Anthony’s entire body alights and quivers, like embers flared to brightness by a stiff breeze. His cock doesn’t harden but it hardly matters, and Anthony lowers a hand between them to tug lazily at it anyway.

“Leave me sore,” Anthony pleads, a laugh twisting through his words like wind. “Leave me aching, beautiful, wide enough that in the morning you can take me effortlessly.”

The spread of Matthew’s fingers bends Anthony’s back from the mattress. For all his self-proclaimed age and exhaustion, he is every bit the lover that Matthew envisioned from his poetry - every bit the boy that sought reckless for such illicit passion in his youth. There is little resistance as Matthew works a steady rhythm inside him, widening and easing, over and over in the same clench and shove of their headstrong hearts. Anthony’s body can strain against him no more than his mind nor his spirit. He wants this, and Matthew, and more and more and more.

“I love you,” Anthony whispers, lips grazing the smooth skin of Matthew’s cheek as his cock leaks soft between his fingers. He whispers warmth against his student’s ear, between hitched breaths and little moans. “You, you are who I want, you are the one who moves my pen now, _oh_ ,” he groans, quaking as Matt curls his fingers. “Only you, Matthew.”

Matt rests against him, breaths coming in quiet pants now over Anthony’s hot skin. Words he believes, words he had dreamt when he stroked himself in silence in his little bed in Baltimore. Here lies a man he will always love, to whom he will always be grateful. Matthew kisses him and pulls his fingers free, rolling to lie atop the poet and bringing one hand down to line himself up.

"Let me be also the one who moves your desires," Matt murmurs as he slowly pushes in, mindful of the lack of lubricant and their lack of sobriety. "The one who moves your dreams, and your body, as I move your heart and pen."

Anthony laughs beneath him, legs lithe and strong, wrapping around his beautiful boy. "And you claim you are no poet, Matthew Brown."

Matt just smiles, a warm and fond thing, and starts a slow rhythm. Much as their promises had rung out through the house, much as their pleasure pulses through them, aching for release, this is not a fucking. It is slow and deep, every thrust pushing breaths from them both in tandem, until Matthew ducks his head to kiss Anthony, one hand pushing back the hair from his forehead, the other touching fingertips against the pulse in his throat.

Champagne bubbles twist sinuous in his blood, but Anthony is no longer dizzied by drink so much as the young man atop him. He holds Anthony in place, keeping his elation contained, when such joy fills Anthony’s body with every thrust and every whisper that he imagines he could fly from it. Not now, though, not when Matthew holds his jaw just so and rests his hand against his head and their lips curve stroking kisses against the other’s mouth.

He drags his knee against Matt’s ribs, and hooks a heel around the back of his leg to squeeze. A sharp thrust drives a gasp from him, laughing as Matthew plants his cock deep. Anthony clenches harder, much as quivering muscles can, and he curves his hips as if to beg for more. It isn’t long before his half-hard cock leaks come between them, mostly clear after their exertions earlier and their inebriation now, but Anthony doesn’t pay it any mind beyond the pleasure that ripples through him and squeezes around Matthew’s cock.

It isn’t the point, that fleeting and temporary release. Not anymore, in compare to the far gentler and far greater thrill that speeds Anthony’s heart just to feel Matthew close, to sweep their lips dry and warm together, to see him there above watching Anthony as if he’s never seen anything so beautiful. Their kiss separates, panting, as Matthew drives him into the mattress, and Anthony can do little more but laugh and cling to him.

“Will you fill me?” the poet grins, grazing his teeth against sleek shoulder muscle trembling taut. “Can you, considering all the champagne you drank -”

“That you fed to me.”

“Never.”

“From your fingers,” Matthew reminds him, laughing. “From your tongue, as I sat at your feet.”

“Perhaps that much holds truth.”

“Too much truth,” Matthew hums. “And I’ll be damned if I don’t fill the challenge. And you. Mostly you.”

They both snort, drunk and delighted, and Matthew shifts his hips in shallow thrusts until Anthony is moaning beneath him, low and stuttered, and Matthew’s breathing hitches. In truth, he is dizzy, he is exhausted, he is close to spilling his load in the poet, but he will hold out, as long as his poor body can.

He slips his hand down to stroke against Anthony’s thigh that tenses, curved, against him. He bends to worship the outline of Anthony’s throat as it bobs up and down on erratic swallows and vibrates with warm sounds.

“I love you,” Matt murmurs.

The cracking stutter of his adoration, each quartered in time with his thrusts, twists Anthony’s body snaring tighter around him. Anthony, as the bearer of such burden, knows the weight of his own ego - he knows its grandeur and its frailties both. And were he to be honest with himself, which he is now - loosened by Matthew’s heart pouring into every kiss and his cock spreading Anthony’s ass wide and so many bottles of champagne - all Anthony has ever wanted is to be loved. Worshipped. Revered and cherished and put on a pedestal. He asks much but in inches he gives, again, as readily as he once did.

He will continue to, as light shines into corners of his heart left too long darkened, and little breaths clear away the cobwebs.

“Beautiful Matthew Brown,” Anthony purrs, their stomachs slick with his come as their bodies glide faster, harder together. “ _I love you_ ,” he whispers in French, the words sweet as wine and more intoxicating. “Sweet boy, I will love you more and more each day. Every day. Be patient with me, and you’ll see.”

“I know,” Matt whispers, nuzzling him, swallowing thick and making a soft sound as he releases his breath. He can feel it, despite his misgivings, despite his worries, he can feel the fondness and affection grow from Anthony. It is a genuine warming to, an allowance, a developing relationship from a summer tryst to something deeper, something more.

“I’m going to come,” Matt breathes, panting against his poet. “I’m going - I can’t -”

It feels too good, being drunk and being warm and loved and close, so close - he can barely breathe, let alone strike two synapses together to form coherent thought. He clings to Anthony and whines softly, asking permission even though he knows he hardly needs it. Asking for validation, perhaps, though he knows he will always get it.

"Yes, in me," begs Anthony. "No, on me, please. Yes. Let me see -"

"Professor - I can't - "

"Oh, God," he groans at the title, one that makes him feel old, but important, more than the implications of his poetry, stature and repose and not young anymore and Christ, if it isn't the most intoxicating thing Anthony's ever been called. His thoughts sway unsteady but he doesn't heed Matthew's protest. He drops his hips, plants his heels, and clasping Matt's cheeks to drag his mouth close, he works free of his cock.

"Show me," Anthony grins against his mouth. "Mark me, Mr. Brown, make me messy and make me yours."

Matt doesn’t need more encouragement than that, he comes without even touching himself, hot and slick against Anthony’s belly, mingling with the clear mess his own cock had left there. He can barely hold himself up, arms trembling as he holds posture over his poet, and after a while he lowers himself with a groan, a laugh, nuzzling against Anthony’s neck.

“God you feel so fucking good,” he whispers, rubbing his face, catlike, against Anthony’s. “And you are a hot mess.”

“Whose fault is that?” Anthony pouts, smiling even still, as he tilts his head towards Matthew in turn. Gentle nodding draws the tip of his nose, nuzzling, against his student’s temple, breathing in the musky heat of sweat and sex and champagne from his skin. He drags the tip of his finger across his stomach when Matthew slips to his side, and once certain that Matt is watching, Anthony curls his tongue and drags his finger between his lips to suck it clean.

The sound that Matthew makes is extraordinary, exultant and awed and aching from the tug of arousal so soon after sating himself. It is in the earnest sigh of his voice that Anthony finds his faith, perhaps not in himself, but in Matthew, instead. By whose decision could such an experience - harmless to all and life itself to those who live it - be construed as wrong, as malicious in intent, as anything less than beautiful? By whom could it be said that men cannot love other men as protectively, honestly, and truly as so many do women?

By Anthony himself, he supposes, and regret twists unfamiliar in his chest. What a wonder that it’s been so long since he’s felt it.

“Sleep,” Anthony murmurs, smiling wider as Matthew whines his soft protest. “Sleep so that we may wake in the morning and know joy again in finding the other near.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Oh Hell,” Anthony whispers, breathing a laugh. “Has it been so long already?”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta'd by our beloved [Noodle](http://noodletheelephant.tumblr.com/)!

Practice leaves Matt at once exhausted and exhilarated - arms shaking and legs weak and smile far too bright on his face. The team is comfortable, still teasing him about his silly accent, poking fun at ways he pronounces words, but he is part of the team now, that is clear. Once in a while, he even goes to parties. Hosted in lavish rooms that look out onto the quad, he has his fill of champagne and accepts expensive cigars, tries port and allows himself to fall into the comfortable banter with his peers regarding debutantes and balls.

The entire time, he wonders how Anthony would fare at such gatherings, how he had fared, when he was a student here and not a don. It amuses him to think that Anthony would make his intentions very clear and hear not a word against them. He has the kind of confidence Matt envies and admires, the kind of confidence that comes with taking a faceful of mud and knowing you could get up after and spit it free and run again.

Matthew rarely sleeps in his rooms anymore. His bed always immaculately made, his books set out on his desk, fireplace untouched even as the months grow colder. He visits them daily, after classes and between them, but it is only to fill his satchel with study notes and reading material before making his way to his bike and leaving campus.

He knows the route to Anthony’s home by heart now, having cycled there at night, in twilight, through mist and fog and the cloudy bliss of inebriation. Matthew holds the bicycle between his thighs and lets his hands hang loose at his sides, tilting his head back. The trees will change color soon, to something gold and burnished caramel. Another season passed and another season spent with his professor.

His scarf catches in the wind on a lazy turn down an empty street, snapping in the air behind him. A quick shower after practice, the same sweater and button-down back on, and he was off. Only a few weeks into Michaelmas term, but the start of it again after the long vac is thrilling.

He wonders if Anthony will remember, will notice that it’s been a year of widely spread back and forth grown increasingly narrow. Accusations of harassment, muffled against the pillow, have given way to expectations of company, near-nightly. The Michaelmas before was the beginning of Matthew’s time at Cambridge, but that isn’t the memory foremost in his mind as leaves scatter beneath his wheels and the first scent of woodsmoke fills his lungs.

He nearly catches a dip in the road when he sees the house, and on its porch, his professor. Clad in flannel trousers from a set of pajamas and a thick cardigan above, Anthony holds a cigarette between his fingers and a pen alongside, aloft momentarily before setting back to the book in his lap. He watches the page above his glasses, but as Matthew’s bicycle clatters lightly closer, Anthony raises his eyes and fails to suppress a smile.

“I don’t think I’ll ever fail to be surprised to see you here,” he admits, as Matthew runs his bike into the grass alongside the porch stairs.

“If you ever do, I’ll wonder what I did wrong,” Matthew replies, making sure the bike is secure before mounting the stairs with a grin and unwinding his scarf until it just hangs over his shoulders. He doesn’t disturb Anthony as he writes, but he does pluck the cigarette from between his fingers to smoke it himself, settling with his back against the side of the chair Anthony sits on.

He hums, delighted, when a hand falls to his hair.

“You’re writing.”

“Scribbling.”

“Your last scribbles made up a book,” Matt reminds him. 

“Mm,” Anthony agrees, a note of foreboding low in his throat. “Such expectations are dangerous.”

“Dangerous?” Matthew laughs, smoky. “It was very well-received from what I read in -”

“Hush.”

“Plenty of people were talking -”

“Mr. Brown.”

“For someone so concerned with how undue others’ success is, you treat yours much the same,” Matthew points out, and Anthony reaches to pluck the cigarette from his fingers as he draws a long line across the page. “Either your confidence is all false, or your humility is.”

“As you cannot expect me to climax multiple times a night, every night, so the writer cannot expect every spatter of ink to be worth anything at all,” he muses. “One successful book does not mean the next will be.”

“So you are working on another then,” grins Matthew, watching Anthony upside down as the older man strokes his student’s hair from his face again, grasping lightly. “Is it about me?”

“You’ve already gotten yours. Now who’s the egotist?”

Matt hums, a warm sound that turns into a laugh. He stretches his legs out before him and leans back further.

“A realist,” he counters. “Because who else would the book be about?”

Anthony raises an eyebrow and drops his gaze to the lovely boy who sits so close, who comes over every evening, now, unless exams hold either of them captive. He considers the lines he had penned this morning regarding the curve of Matthew’s back in the early spring sunlight, a valley for motes of dust to make their final dance. 

He isn’t wrong.

“Will you read them to me?” Matthew asks him.

“Matthew.”

“You know that voice doesn’t work on me anymore.”

“Nonsense,” snorts Anthony. “As opera singers can shatter glass, so does that particular tone make your clothes fall off.”

“It’s too cold out here for that. The neighbors would see.”

Anthony’s lips twitch higher, his eyes narrow, smile spreading despite himself. He takes a languid drag and curls the smoke across his tongue before sighing it free in twin plumes from his nose. “When they’re done. Maybe,” he says, handing back the cigarette.

“Just a line, then? As a gift,” Matthew grins, turning to sit on his hip and settle his chin against Anthony’s thigh, long legs propped up on an ottoman dragged out of the house. Anthony’s look is as lingering and dry as the smoke that coils around them, brow slowly arching.

“It’s not your birthday,” he asks, though it’s phrased as a statement.

“No. It isn’t.”

“You didn’t race today.”

“No.”

Anthony’s mind flickers back days and weeks and months, calendar pages fanning over trips they’ve taken together, over holiday weekends, over victories in crew and academia alike, back and back and -

“Oh Hell,” Anthony whispers, breathing a laugh. “Has it been so long already?”

Matthew just grins, warm and delighted and his heart beats too quickly. It’s one thing to have the thought alone, that you have been with another person - in their life, in their bed - for a year. It is quite another to have that exact thought voiced to you by that very person. It feels like magic. It feels alive and true and incredible.

“It’s awful, isn’t it?” Matt offers, amused. “An entire year of trying to drive the other away and finding ourselves wedged in all the deeper.”

Anthony snorts, and finishes the cigarette, tossing it to the ashtray to smoke away until there is nothing left in it to burn. He drops a hand to Matt’s hair to stroke it, run through it. Delighting in the brightness of his student’s eyes, the youth and familiarity of them. These eyes that blink sleepy at him in the mornings, that widen when he is penetrated or sucked or touched… eyes that smile even when lips hardly move.

“And there you go getting lost again,” Matt whispers. “You can’t help it, can you? Your terribly poetic nature.”

“Is that what we’re calling it now?”

“Instead of -”

“All manner of things that Dare Not Speak Its Name,” teases Anthony. He lets his notebook slip closed, pen tucked safely inside, and slouches further in his seat. His thumb strokes down Matthew’s cheek as his hand splays further, beyond his scarf to curl stroking against Matthew’s chest. “What am I to do with you now? All my endeavors to dissuade you of any wisdom in staying here, come to naught.”

Matthew rests his cheek against Anthony’s arm and rubs softly against the well-loved sweater. “Keep me, I suppose.”

“So it seems,” Anthony agrees. He parts his lips with his tongue, an instant’s hesitation, always, but that never enough to stop him making the leap. “I’m glad you’ve not got enough sense to listen to me,” he murmurs, leaning low to let a kiss linger against Matthew’s hair, as sunset shadows spill long and inky across them and the sky darkens like a bruise. “I’m glad that you came, beyond fields of broken bottles and hissing venom. I’m glad that you stayed.”

Matt makes a sound, a warm thing that is almost like a purr, and closes his eyes to let the words seep against his skin, to let them settle. He nuzzles against Anthony’s leg, breathes in the familiar sleepy smell of him on days like these, early Fridays before a lazy weekend. He could not be happier that he tried, that he had come here, that he had talked to Anthony, met him, convinced him even just the once, _only if for a night_...

“Come on, old chap,” Matthew tells him, affecting a rather atrocious accent to both watch Anthony smile and wince hearing it. “Inside. I’ll make us dinner, then ride you until we exhaust ourselves before dawn.”

He pushes to stand, laughs when his hand is caught, and manages to catch his balance with a leg over Anthony’s own, in a standing straddle over him as he leans down and accepts his kiss in greeting.

In this, Anthony finds himself fearless. In many things, now - again - where once he shied away akin to a horse spooked too many times. Away from affection, away from others, away from himself and his very spirit that has like violets always sprung flourishing no matter how he’s tried to suppress it. If they neighbors see, so be it. It’s unlikely they don’t suspect already anyway, between the constant visits and scandalously near-bare trips out to check the mail, between the raucous fights and even louder fucking.

He finds himself fearless, and knows it is the bearer of the lips tilted against his own who has made him so brazen once more.

“Perhaps -”

“No,” Matthew laughs, attempting to withdraw again. “That’s too much even for you.”

“It isn’t, I only have to sit here - you’re the one that would have to work,” Anthony complains, yielding with a limp body and a groan as he’s tugged from his seat. He catches his book before it falls, delighting that he did, and he follows Matthew obediently back into the house. When released, he lights another cigarette. “I’m going to have a word with your tutor,” he murmurs. “You’ve clearly got too much free time on your hands. Oughtn’t you have essays to write?”

Matt makes a sound in his throat and tosses his bag deliberately by the door, the books within thunking loudly against the wood. He raises an eyebrow and toes off his shoes before padding through to the kitchen barefoot.

“I brought my work with me. Few essays in my field of study, but a lot to memorize. I may have to draw pretty words against your skin to practice for my anatomy final.”

“Unacceptable,” Anthony mumbles around his cigarette, leaving his book on a side table as he follows Matthew through his own house. “Essays should be the mandatory requirement for any field.”

“Because you derive sadistic pleasure in setting them for your own class?” Matt asks him, grinning bright as he looks over his shoulder. “I pity the fools.”

“You, Mr. Brown, are in that class.”

“Not officially registered,” Matthew reminds him, taking out of their drawer a wooden spoon and several other utensils that he will need for dinner. “And thus entitled to exemption, and preferential treatment.”

“Perhaps I should rethink my expectations of those auditing my lectures,” Anthony says, socked feet silent against the floor as he follows after. Cigarette uplifted, his other arm folded over his stomach, he tilts his chin and attempts to affect just the angle of a dowager, seeking with salacious intent after her handsome young help. “Essays and tutoring are the standard by which we learn to voice, share, and defend our ideas. It’s why Cambridge is the greatest university in the world. None of this studying-to-the-test nonsense the Americans have started.”

“Greatest? Truly?”

“Of course,” blinks Anthony, and suddenly, his eyes narrowing. “Don’t you dare - ”

“Mr. Graham would have something to say about that,” Matthew grins, as Anthony lashes out for a wooden spoon to menace him with.

“Mr. Graham is a mechanic,” Anthony reminds him, entirely thrilled to do so. “From _Hull_.”

“Who also happens to be one of the most loved history professors at his college,” Matthew points out, gently tapping the end of his spoon against Anthony’s nose, delighting in how it wrinkles when he does. He can feel the playfulness build between them, like a slowly boiling kettle. Higher and higher and warmer and warmer the pressure builds until something will give. 

And he is more than happy to have it do so.

“I’ve gone to his lectures, he’s rather good,” he adds, amused.

“Tomorrow,” Anthony tells him, unfurling smoke with his words and pointing grandly with his spoon. “Tomorrow I’m going to your college and I’m meeting with your tutor and I’m going to tell him you’ve been cheating on Cambridge with Oxford.”

Matthew taps his own spoon against Anthony’s. Again. Again. A swift circle of Anthony’s wrist finds his weapon freed enough that he can poke it against Matthew’s chest enough to make him grimace. “I only went the once. Where did you learn fencing?”

“At Cambridge,” Anthony enunciates. Then he blinks, and amends, “And growing up posh. I broke one of the old man’s foils once and caught a lashing for it, and he found a teacher for me to learn how to properly use them. When in God’s name have you had time to audit at miserable Oxford?”

Matthew grins and rolls his wrist with his own spoon held carefully. He has no idea how to fence. Baltimore didn’t offer that level of sophistication at his school. Matt’s a brawler, not a gentleman.

“I went with Will to one of his summer lectures,” he reminds Anthony. “While you and Hannibal lounged at home and called each other god-only-knows-what in French.”

“Italian.”

“Italian, then,” Matt laughs, making another lunge and finding it easily rebuffed. Anthony raises an eyebrow and sets his cigarette between his lips again to switch hands, holding the spoon in his left, now, as though to challenge Matthew into beating him when he has so disadvantaged himself.

“So I went, for a full day of lectures, and I enjoyed it.” Another lunge yields just as poor success as when Anthony had not handicapped himself, and Matthew bites his lip. “You know, it is really fucking hot that you can do that.”

Anthony puffs, chin tilted high again, without removing the cigarette from between his lips. Wiggling his feet wide, in rough woolen socks - mismatched olive and blue - he turns his body sidelong, making it narrower. Settling into a fencer’s stance as if it were as natural as breathing, he plumes another cloud of smoke and raises a brow, challenging.

Matt lunges swiftly, readily side-stepped with little movement at all.

“You’re overcommitting,” Anthony tells him, words mumbled around his primrose-oil cigarette. “To both your attack and your scholarship.”

“A reader telling me I’m doing too much scholarship?” Matthew laughs, turning to face Anthony again after a gentle poke to his side with the spoon.

“You need only enough to be effective in attaining your goal, Mr. Brown. You needn’t over-exert yourself, so much as focus on the particular point -” With a skip forward, Anthony prods him again with the spoon and retreats, removing his cigarette to grin. “And therein you’ll find your success. Tell me again how very dashing I am.”

“You’re bloody terrible,” Matt laughs, and sucks in his stomach to avoid another lunge, attempting to knock Anthony’s spoon from his hand with his own. He succeeds in drawing a hum from the older man and finds his fingers rapped with the back of the spoon for his awful attempt. It hurts. “Sir,” Matt adds, rubbing his hand and side stepping so that he no longer finds himself trapped in the corner by the counter, should the fencing match turn to a chase instead.

Anthony pins the smoke between his lips, dragging hard, and then flicks it into the sink to smolder out. His gaze sharpens, his shoulders shift; he finds muscles too long unused that will certainly ache in the morning, but for now simmer hot beneath his skin.

“I could run you through a half-dozen times with this before you could do more than gasp,” Anthony tells him, the exaggeration satisfying his distant memory of being a very poor fencer, all things considered. He had pursued it at university predominantly for the above-board thrill of physical sport against other young men, though had he proven a talent at it, success at trials would have certainly gotten back to the place of his upbringing.

Spite and sensuality have always been Anthony’s greatest motivations.

But Matthew is swift, even in unfamiliarity, and twists aside as Anthony advances. They pivot, and Anthony lands a jab against Matthew’s shoulder hard enough that he winces, cursing. Their eyes meet. Their knees bend.

And when Matthew turns to run, Anthony gives chase.

The spoon finds its home with a quiet ‘whap’ against the couch as Matt careens past it and hand now freed, clasps against the bannister and hoists himself upstairs. There is no escape up there unless he can lose Anthony between the bathroom and bedroom, and it’s likely, though not guaranteed. With a laugh, Matthew launches himself into the bedroom and lets the door swing closed behind himself.

He can hear Anthony stalk up the stairs after him, hardly in a hurry, and presses himself against the corner of the closet, close enough to the door to slip through once Anthony passes through it, far enough that he might miss being grasped as he does so.

He times his heart against the steps that make their way closer and closer, muffled by woolen socks against the smooth floor. Matthew can barely contain a laugh and bites his wrist to try, eyes on the door as the spoon is used to slowly open it. A moment, another, and Matt makes a break for it, laughing triumphant as he evades Anthony’s grasp and makes for the stairs again.

He’s thwacked against the thigh as he darts by and Anthony lunges, using his lanky reach to full advantage. Swift steps barrel him down the stairs behind his errant student with a curse and a laugh, and the single breath for which Matthew still to consider his route is his downfall. Anthony collides hard with him, arm slung around his waist, and they crash to the floor with a thud hard enough to rattle the room.

“Far, far too much energy,” Anthony mutters, panting, as he draws himself up with a grimace. “I am concerned, as your counselor -”

Matthew shoves against Anthony’s chest as he sits up, but Anthony snares his wrist. They fumble and grasp and snare at the other, wrestling back down to horizontal on the floor again, until Anthony slings his leg over Matthew’s hips. His lips bare in a snarling grin as Matthew tries to wrestle loose, stronger by far but smaller, too.

“Miscreant,” Anthony scolds him. “Delinquent. A common ruffian, bloody Americans, my God, I love you.”

Matt laughs, makes a helpless little noise as he ruts back against Anthony, initially with no demand beyond finding a hold on the floor to flip them over and wriggle free. But he finds himself easing his struggle, panting against the floor as he tilts his head enough to see behind himself and grin at his professor.

“Untamed and awful,” he adds. “Feral and entirely uncivilized, aren’t I?”

“Rebellion burns in your blood, colonial,” Anthony snorts, affecting a far higher-brow accent than he would ever bother with before. It’s a little alarming how readily it returns to him, the nasal intonations and crisp consonants, but he eases his mind by easing his body, in a slow, undulating curve against Matthew’s own. “You Americans never knew what was good for you. Always upsetting the proper order of things. It doesn’t surprise me at all that you don’t mind your elders -”

“You are that,” Matthew laughs against the floor, pushing back with his hips.

“Entirely so. Where is my spoon?”

“Over there.”

“Damn,” Anthony frowns. He nearly topples sideways off Matthew as he stretches for it, scraping it centimeters closer at a time, until he can snare it properly. “Now what do you have to say?”

“I regret nothing!” Matthew giggles against the floor, and Anthony’s heart could stop for the beauty of it and he, too, would hold no misgivings for its timely demise. He brings the spoon down against Matthew’s bottom with a swift crack, grinning as Matthew moans and coils beneath him.

“If you will not heed my words, I’ll find a way to make myself heard, Mr. Brown.”

Matt bites his lip and curls more, adjusts his position beneath his professor, entirely contented to stay as he is unrestrained. His body sings with adrenaline and need, his heart contented and warm with what the day means for them, with new things he learns every day from his lover. He jerks and uncoils again when he’s spanked again and stretches his arms out in front of himself like a cat.

“I’m listening, sir,” he mumbles.

“I love you,” Anthony tells him again, mustering the sternest tone that he can, though keenly aware that he is a posh fairy fop and entirely unconvincing. He brings down the spoon again to make his point clear. “I adore you beyond all sense and reason,” he says, with another spank. “And damned if as both a student in my university and my lover both I won’t see you succeed in more than just moving boats quickly down the Cam,” Anthony concludes, with a volley of smacks with the spoon that arch to moaning the strong young man beneath his legs.

Matthew trembles, sore and hard as hell in his pants and wanting nothing more than this and this alone for as long as they can both have it. The play, the sex, the affection, lazy evenings and late mornings. He wants it, he _aches_.

“I love you,” he gasps, letting his thighs spread wider, his back arch harder, his hips push higher. He is wanton and deliciously in love. He tenses his legs and relaxes them again, demanding more attention by whatever means Anthony deems he has earned. “I would not lose you for anything,”

He laughs, bringing a hand to his mouth to bite against gently. He thinks of how he genuinely loves to study here, beyond Anthony and beyond the love he gets to share. The college is spacious and free, his studies are interesting, his sport enjoyable. Keeping his scholarship is as much a joy for him as it is a necessity - he would not give that up for anything either.

“God, please touch me,” he whispers.

The spoon skitters across the floor as Anthony tosses it away. He hasn’t had a drink in days - a shocking revelation in itself considering that only a year ago, he’d comfortably resigned himself to a bleary-eyed end at the bottom of a bottle - but he feels drunk. He is, entirely, intoxicated with affection for the boy who loves him more than any other. There is no doubt of that now, no lingering dread that Matthew will have had his fill and seen his idol humanized and moved on to younger, prettier things.

He does not doubt that Matthew loves him. He does not doubt that he loves Matthew too.

Sliding his body long against Matthew’s own, Anthony sprawls across him with a pleased hum. They twist hips to hips, bellies to bellies, hearts to hearts and finally mouths to mouths. Their lips curve together, pushing and pulling in equal measure. Anthony jerks Matthew’s shirt and sweater up his stomach, and splays his hands across his warm skin as their tongues twist together in open air between their mouths.

“Happy anniversary,” Anthony murmurs, nose wrinkling as he smiles. “The first, I hope, of many.”

Matthew grins, sleepy and lovely, and wraps his arms heavy over Anthony's shoulders, stroking the tickling hair at the back of his neck that he has let grow longer.

"The first of many, many more," Matt confirms, spreading his legs first one then the other and pushing up on his toes as he presses close to his professor. He gently noses against him, all kitten affection and pliancy. "Might make dinner after this," Matthew decides, running a hand down Anthony's back and back up again. "You hardly mind, do you?"

Anthony laughs, his form fitting sleek against Matthew’s beneath him as he rocks lazy, mindless, seeking an unhurried pleasure born more of nearness than lust. He drapes a kiss against Matthew’s smooth-shorn cheek. Against the hard carved line of his jaw. Against the ticklish spot where it curves just beneath his big ears.

“I hardly mind,” Anthony murmurs. “I hardly mind that you cook for me. That you tug the blankets over me at night when I kick them away. That you manage each morning to make tea despite needing to leave for lecture. That you take away the bottle from me when I’m seeking into untenable depths. No,” he says. His hands flatten against Matthew’s chest as he arches upward, feline and lithe, a deep bend in his back. “I do mind.”

“You do,” Matthew confirms.

“Mm. I pay it every bit of mind that I can, and each and every time, my appreciation deepens. I’ve no capability to care for myself,” he admits, lips curving to a faint moue of thought. “I am fortunate to have you here. I’d surely have drank myself to death by now if not for you. That was the intention, anyway,” he grins, despite the raw honesty of it all.

Matt regards him, takes the words in for what they are - admission and a seeking for confirmation, reassurance. He tugs Anthony back down to kiss him again, languid and slow, and forces his mind away from the horror of imagining his lover drunk to near-death.

It will not happen. He will not let It. 

"And you," he murmurs, "reading me to sleep at night when I wake from a nightmare, holding me close. The way you touch my hair to settle it, touch my back to greet me. Without you I would be a silly boy with an oar, rowing his way down the Cam never to be seen again."

Matthew grins and narrows his eyes, squirming in pleasure against the floor. 

"Now," he says, raising his chin in beautiful petulant demand. "I would like to be made love to, please, until I grow quite hoarse."

“That,” Anthony hums, smile splitting to a grin and breaking into a laugh. “That is something of which I’m capable.”

With eager hands and stiff-bodied gyrations grinding fierce, they bare the other and leave around them tidepools of knitted sweaters and stiff wool, trousers and socks and suspenders all left as flotsam beside the ebb and flow of kisses and frottage. Nevermind that the old wooden floor predates them both by a century. Nevermind that it’s uneven and chill with the slow-spreading frost of autumn. It hardly matters when Anthony draws Matthew’s blood to a bloom of violet beneath a sucking kiss. It hardly matters when Matt pinches one of Anthony’s nipples to scarlet stiffness between his fingers.

“How would you care for it tonight, darling boy?” Anthony asks him. “Since I refuse to sully myself in the kitchen, I can provide for you in this way instead.” He slinks low and settles alongside Matthew, egalitarian positioning. “Shall I sodomize you until you shake beneath me? Will you bugger me into breathlessness? Perhaps I will simply learn, again and anew all at once, every part of your body. Here,” Anthony says, brushing a kiss across Matthew’s collar bone. “Or here,” he suggests, with fingers fanning over a sharp hipbone.

Matt shivers, moving his own fingers to catch against Anthony’s, span and spread over them to compare their size with his own. Their love life is exceptionally fulfilling, both enjoy either position they are put into and never once has it been dull. Matt brings Anthony’s fingers to his lips to kiss and hums, squirming comfortably against him, eyes hooded and lips parted on a smile.

“I very much like the sound of the first option,” he says. “Exhaust me and let me rest before I feed us both. Then in the morning I will wake you up far too early for your beautiful brain to handle, and bugger you breathless then.”

“God bless America,” murmurs Anthony with a laugh, before he loses himself to another kiss.

Their lips spread smooth together, dry and heated, dampening when their tongues pass between. He tastes his lover’s tongue, so much more than merely his student; he traces his teeth and relents moaning beneath the ferocity of Matthew’s mouth as it claims him. They part only enough for Anthony to wet two of his fingers before joining again, and when Matthew’s knees spread to the floor, Anthony seeks out the warm crevice between them.

He circles, rubs, spreads and presses inward. They are both scandalously loose for the other, every morning and damn near every evening with one pressed inside. Anthony feels it when he stands to present a lecture, a tug of muscle that sings a sweet pain up through his spine. Matthew recalls it when he straddles his bike to return to his college in the morning.

It takes little to work Matthew open, and Anthony gives him less. A swift turn of fingertips, splaying, before he spits into his hand and slicks himself ready. Beneath long lashes, lake-blue eyes meet those of bottle-glass green. Anthony sighs a trembling sound against Matthew’s mouth that from any other would be uncertainty; from him, it is anticipation, as he aligns himself.

Matt groans, used to the pressure and the delicious spark as he is slowly impaled and held so beautifully stretched. He bites his lip and lets it go as Anthony settles within him, against him, touches his hair and strokes his knuckles down Matthew’s face. They adore each other slowly, gently, and when Anthony buries himself to the root, Matt takes his face between his hands and kisses him deep.

The floor is far from the comfort of their bed but Matt arches up against it regardless, setting one foot to the smooth surface, hooking his ankle against Anthony’s thigh as he holds on and draws, deliberately, red marks with his nails against his poet’s back. He grins at the hiss, narrows his eyes and clenches his muscles around him.

Playful, little, beautiful. A boy wonder for the man he loves.

Anthony ducks his head, scratched skin stretching hot. He marvels at the sight of his cock vanishing into Matthew, into heat and pressure and a body he knows now as well as his own. Matthew’s cock twitches stiff against Anthony’s stomach, his balls drawn up tight. Anthony’s knees settle into dips in the floor and he bucks his hips, watching up the length of his lover as Matthew’s every muscle clenches in response and spills into a moan.

“Come with me,” Anthony begins, grinning when Matthew interrupts him with a laugh and clambering arms around his neck.

“Have to give me a minute more.”

“That,” agrees Anthony, “and London. Soon. Tell me you will, tell me you’ll be beside me - they’ll want to know the one who brought out another book in me, I want them to know you, those bright young things, and you who belongs among them -”

Matt watches him, wide-eyed, and lets his brows furrow. Not in displeasure, not in anger, but in genuine surprise, enough that it tugs the breath from his lungs and leaves him empty, enough that for the first time in a long time he is truly and entirely speechless. He moans softly as Anthony hums, sets one hand against Matthew’s back and the other to the floor to lever him up and have Matthew sitting in his lap as he languidly continues to fuck him.

“You would have me go to London.”

“I do believe I asked, yes,” Anthony murmurs, smiling up at the boy who squirms against him. Matt has no words for this either, and so laughs instead, wrapping his arms more securely around Anthony as he pushes up onto his knees and down again, shuddering in pleasure when he finds that perfect pace, that perfect spot, that drives stars behind his eyes. And then he laughs more, youthful and giggling, and turns his face against Anthony’s neck.

“I have nothing to wear,” he admits weakly.

“That is a problem,” Anthony agrees. He spans his hands along the rippling back of his student, up over the broad, flat plains of his shoulderblades, to hook above his arms. He doesn’t force Matthew’s movement; he doesn’t control it at all. He simply watches, rapt, as Matthew twists and turns atop him, each slow sinking movement sucking the breath from Anthony’s lungs and twisting it into a moan.

“I’ll take you,” Anthony tells him. “We’ll go and get a suit made for you, you’ll need it for school anyway. Something snug,” he says, fingertips skimming back down along Matthew’s taut sides. “Modern. Fitted for you alone, in all the world. For you are unique,” Anthony grins, as Matthew laughs, “in all the world. Are you laughing at me?”

“Terrible,” shivers Matthew, head lolling back and eyes slipping closed, as he rubs the head of Anthony’s cock against the tender nub inside himself. A tight cinch of fingers around his cock jerks his voice high when Anthony begins to stroke him.

“Ungrateful. I will have you there as my lover, not as a schoolboy.”

Matthew shivers at the word, clinging to Anthony harder, panting between them against their wet skin.

“Say that again,” he breathes, delighted when the poet does, pressing the words warm against his temple, kissing his cheek as he draws his nails, in turn, down Matthew’s back to leave marks of his own, to feel this beautiful boy bend for him, arch and spread and shudder as Anthony twists his wrist deliberately around his cock.

“I’ll go,” Matthew breathes. “With you. I’ll come.”

“You’re absolutely right, you will,” laughs Anthony, a single low note of relief and joy both.

He cups his free hand around the back of Matthew’s neck and bends him low, as Anthony himself lays back against the cold floor. Astride him, Matthew stretches strong and glorious, attuned innately to every flex and release of his body, for purpose and for show. Anthony strokes Matthew’s heavy cock in time with his movements. Faster. Tighter. More unsteady as his own release begins to coil tighter and tighter in the pit of his belly, as much from the hot friction of Matthew’s body as from the sight of him fucking himself on his poet’s cock.

When Anthony comes, it’s hard and sudden. A curt jerk upward to bury himself into his student’s ass, Matthew’s muscles clenching tight enough to milk Anthony dry as he bends gasping, wide-eyed, trembling from the force of it. Slick heat drips wet down his cock as Matthew moves slowly. Anthony makes himself breathe, shaking into a low groan as he twists his fist faster around Matt’s length.

Matthew whimpers, helpless and little and entirely contented to be, hands fisting against the floor on either side of Anthony’s head. He makes another small noise and ducks to nuzzle close, to pant against Anthony’s lips as he watches his hand slip over his cock, pulling him closer and closer and closer still until all Matt can do is hold on, close his eyes, and let himself come.

He shudders, holds himself up and near collapses against his poet when he’s spilled. Immediately his arms curl around him, immediately he presses closer still, making himself appear tiny against the man who holds him. He is sleepy and in love, thinking now of warm evenings in London together, drinking champagne as Anthony speaks of his words and Matthew tries to mask his smile, knowing they are about him.

That they will be, from here on out.

“How do you satisfy me so entirely?” Matt mumbles, grinning and pressing a wet kiss to Anthony’s chest. Lean arms surround him and hold him close, with no thoughts spared to the discomfort of the floor or the stickiness cooling between them.

“I ask myself the same, often,” Anthony says. “How someone so extraordinary can find an old embittered poet so pleasing.”

“Are you crazy?” Matthew laughs, and Anthony’s eyes drift closed as his smile spreads.

“Exceedingly. Mad beyond any hope of salvation. Mad with words that I cannot stop even if I wished to do so. Mad with love,” Anthony says, “for a beautiful man from America, uncouth he may be, who for some reason loves me.”

“Return to limericks again, rhyming’s in your blood, good sir,” Matt tells him, and adjusts himself enough to kiss against Anthony’s cheek, then his jaw, then his lips. He noses against him like a little cat, ducks his head to rub hair against him as well, before shifting on his knees and with a groan, letting Anthony slip free of his body.

“I adore you,” he tells him, looking down at Anthony from where he holds himself up on his arms once more. “Embittered and old as you are.”

“I love you,” Anthony answers. “Delinquent and barbaric colonial.”

“Let me start dinner,” says Matthew, laughing as Anthony snares him close again and tilts him to the floor to lay beside him.

“Rest,” Anthony says. “First rest and then -”

“On the floor? You’ll bitch about your back aching.”

A hum betrays Anthony’s agreement with Matthew’s assertion, and only then does Anthony allow Matthew to stand and grasp his hands, to pull Anthony dizzy to his feet as well. They collapse into a warm embrace, firm bodies and residual heat, sticky and messy and scarcely standing.

“Take me to bed,” Anthony murmurs. “Don’t leave my side until I’m sleeping.”

Matthew hums, nodding against him, swaying a little as they both step closer to hold the other near. After a moment, he steps away, one step, then another, and leads Anthony after him up the stairs and to their bedroom. Neither care for the mess, neither care for much beyond how close they can curl when they pull back the heavy blankets and curl just beneath the sheet.

Matthew presses up against Anthony’s back and noses against his neck, eyes closed but body buzzing, awake, filled with energy and vigor to do more and make Anthony smile with everything he does. He knows he will go downstairs and pick up their clothes and start on dinner, and read his study books as he bends over the counter because the bruises from the spoon will start to show by then and sitting will be uncomfortable… he knows that when Anthony wakes, Matt will greet him with a jest and a grin, and go to his arms and hold him close. They will argue over dinner and both enjoy it immensely, they will bathe together and share a cigarette or seven. They will go to bed before the dawn and make love beneath the cool covers and fall asleep contented.

And so it will go for months, he knows, years, he hopes, and biting his lip, Matt grins.

“Perhaps I shouldn’t apply for rooms next term,” he murmurs. “Tell them I found a lovely little cottage elsewhere.”

Anthony shifts, barely awake but awake enough for this, and hums a long low note.

“About bloody time,” he mumbles, burying his face into the pillow, and Matthew can do little more than burrow against him and try to stifle the laughter and tears that seek to leave him all at once.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He can see that Anthony watches him, can feel it, and with the childish joy that comes from the genuinely perfect sensation of being alive, Matthew pulls down his trousers and pants at once, and bare, with a whoop of pleasure, races to the breaking waves._
> 
> _“Americans,” Anthony murmurs fondly, cheeks warm not from sun but from the contagious joy between them as Matthew hurtles himself into the waves._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta'd by our beloved [Noodle](http://noodletheelephant.tumblr.com/)!

Anthony’s distress can be measured by the puff of his primrose oil cigarettes. Languid clouds unfurling match his breath, deep and sustained, as when they’ve finished fiercely fond fucking or when they wake to morning warmth. Steady drags as he writes, one every several minutes, steady as a metronome.

And then there are days like today, rare. Anthony hardly inhales, puffing burst after burst of smoke so swiftly that Matthew wonders if he can even taste it, or if he’s not just blowing outward on the damn thing. Anthony stands in his robe and slippers, little more, one arm crossed over his stomach and his cigarette hand uplifted.

“How,” Anthony asks, in the same tone as one might when receiving a fatal diagnosis. “How are there so many boxes?”

Matthew just shrugs, hoisting another one atop an already teetering stack by the stairs. Most of it is books for school. Some are for trinkets, the rest is clothes. Warm clothes for winters here, pretty clothes that are making their way back to the home they were originally pilfered from.

“I lead a colorful life,” Matt offers with a grin, turning on his heel to grab the last box from the back of the car one of the boys from his college had lent him for the afternoon. “And I think I’m done,” he sighs, drawing a hand through his sweaty hair and scrubbing it back from his forehead. He tilts his head at his lover and licks his bottom lip into his mouth. “You’re beautiful when you’re confused.”

“It’s a flush of dismay, I assure you.”

“There’s not that much,” Matthew says with a laugh, ascending the stairs. “And your house is huge.”

Anthony raises his chin, pretending as if he isn’t wonderfully overwhelmed by the sweaty, beautiful young man approaching him in little more his summer shirtsleeves and jeans.

 _Jeans_.

It is entirely uncivilized, marvelously uncouth. Anthony holds his cigarette between his lips when Matthew leans towards him, embers crackling as smoke wraps between them.

“You look like a laborer,” Anthony informs him.

Matthew just smiles wider, slipping his thumbs into the belt loops that hang empty without a belt to support. He rests his weight back against one leg and cocks his hips, shifts enough that this loose shirt rides up to reveal a sliver of belly.

“Do I?” he asks, pulling that drawl of his accent harsher through his smile. He knows Anthony at once wants to scold him and fuck him when he hears it, he’s tested that theory several times now, on and off campus. “Well, sir, I’ve found myself in need of work, now that my latest gig is finished. Any panels need putting up? Heavy lifting? Bending to take up things so you don’t damage your back, sir?” Matt snorts, but keeps his pose, keeps his narrowed-eyed delight at teasing Anthony. “I’m very, very good,” he adds.

He pretends not to notice the shiver that tugs Anthony taller, and wraps his arm a little tighter across himself.

“What makes you say that?” Anthony inquires, lofty.

“Used to work the Baltimore docks. Lifting things, putting them down again. Up and down and up and down, back and forth,” Matthew murmurs. “Every time a little faster, until -”

Anthony’s breath catches. “Until?” he whispers.

“Until the job is done. Until my boss is satisfied.”

With a rush of air, Anthony all but collapses against him, dizzied as much by the flood of blood filling his cock as by the darkening amusement of the brash American who watches him with a grin. Anthony reaches, fingers spread but hesitant, uncertain, and finally snare in Matthew’s shirt to pull him near and crush their lips together. Their kiss tastes of sweat and cigarettes, and Anthony pulls back just as abruptly with a moan.

“Hired,” he smiles, eyes narrow. “You can start by getting all those boxes off my lawn.”

“Our lawn.”

“Ah,” Anthony exclaims, pointing at Matthew as he turns toward the house again. “Insolence will not be tolerated.”

“Start a tally of my indiscretions, then, sir. There will be several, I think,” Matt says, smiling wide as he strides over to the nearest pile of boxes to hoist up. “I cuss like a fucking sailor, sir, will that be a problem?”

“I’ve no tolerance for such crudeness,” comes the reply from inside the house. Matthew hefts the box inside and sets it in the sitting room, watching as Anthony - his cigarette crushed out in an ashtray - pours two cups of coffee. “I’m afraid there will be a penalty for every time you feel so inclined.”

“Well hell, this will be great fun then,” Matt grins, giving Anthony a deliberately slow turn to show off his body before he heads outside again. There are, in truth, a lot of boxes but most are half empty, too many things Matt had worried would crush had he crammed it all together. It takes four or five trips inside to bring everything in, and by that point he has several penalties and has found himself kissed at least twice for every single one of them.

“I’ll have to return the car tomorrow,” he mumbles, sleepy-eyed as he’s kissed again. “Shall we use it in the meantime?”

“You won’t need it to unpack this mess and put it somewhere else,” Anthony snorts, pressing a refilled mug to Matthew’s hands. His prior tension has faded, into lax shoulders and a lazy smile. He turns away as if coy when Matthew leans close, humming warm delight when his cheek is nuzzled instead. “Where would you want to go? I can’t drive, you know.”

“Really?”

“Truly. Motorcars are monstrous things, I’d surely kill myself in one,” he muses. “Smeared all across a roundabout in a smudge of fine velvet and the scent of juniper as gin rises into the air in place of the soul I long ago sacrificed to enjoy the likes of you.”

“You’re an idiot,” Matt snorts before kissing him again, arms wrapped around Anthony’s neck, one hand careful to keep the cup balanced, the other splayed through his poet’s hair. “Sod the car, then, I’ll return it tomorrow as innocent as when I picked it up.”

Another lazy kiss, sloppy and delightful, and Matt rocks his hips up against Anthony’s before pulling away with a hum.

“Well, I can’t very well leave this house a mess now that I live in it too, can I?” he sighs, feigning being put upon. “Perhaps I’ll take the day to settle, to unpack and leave you be to whatever work you had planned. Be the humble and unintrusive house guest -” A laugh shrieks through the words as Anthony scoops his boy up around the middle and Matt hangs limp against him, doesn’t even struggle. “Just trying to be polite, darling.”

Anthony ignores the spilled coffee as it spatters to the floor, cup half empty as Matthew tries to balance it. He presses their brows together, seeking kiss after kiss after kiss, now that they’re free from the prying eyes of neighbors who surely already suspect far worse things than the unexpected and blissful domesticity to which they’ve somehow settled. Matthew voices a protest between their lips, laughing as he twists away, only to be pulled closer, his back against Anthony’s chest.

“Perhaps we should go out,” Anthony relents, “to celebrate.”

“Oh?”

“That you are here, now. That you will be here, tomorrow. That no more will you have to leave before dawn to pedal back to your college -”

“Except when I have practice for the crew.”

“Except then,” Anthony allows, unusually gracious and expectedly selfish, considering how sincerely he loves to be pinned and made love to by Matthew when he’s sore and strong and sweaty from his rowing. “We could go to the city.”

“Too many clothes,” Matt grins. “You’ll spend half the day dressing for it.”

“We could go to the sea.”

“Too many people.”

“Not the places I know,” Anthony tempts him. He lets Matthew slip free and lifts a brow, amusement arching his brow.

"Well Professor Dimmond, I never," Matthew laughs, affecting offense. He considers the room filled with his boxes, considers the early afternoon heat that, even through the windows of the car, felt scalding. He sets a hand against Anthony's mouth when he begins to voice a protest and kisses against his own fingers. 

"Let me at least shift these to where they belong," Matt says. "Out of the way of the main room so we don't trip on them on our inevitable tango to the kitchen later."

"You can't tango, my love," Anthony points out, mumbling against Matthew's hand.

"I'm learning." Matt's smile is brilliant, and he lets Anthony free only to kiss him again. "An hour or two to settle, to shuffle most of the boxes aside and then -"

Anthony completes his sentence with another kiss, happily bending his mouth against Matthew’s own, a hand against his cheek. They part with a happy sigh and turn their noses together, nuzzling near before Matthew turns to the work at hand and Anthony follows.

So it began not with a bang, but with a whimper. Many of them, helpless to the pull of each other, no matter how Anthony tried in alternations of desperation to cleave Matthew to him and to push him away. Declarations of the failings of the male heart accompanied by the sound of something breaking found their meters balanced by gasping proclamations of love through kisses or tears or both. And with every step that Anthony took, Matthew took one too, forward and away, a dance ill-practiced and unfamiliar that found its rhythm and brought them here.

Now.

Together beneath the same roof, a house that filled with breath and life has become a home. When he found himself tossed from childhood comfort to the streets, when he made another home and watched it split piece by piece as its family began to separate, he was certain he would never know such warmth again. Here there is a roof above his head, a bed on which to lay, but it was seldom more than a private place where he planned, at some point or another, to drink himself to death. Anthony realizes, in quiet reflection as Matthew tugs open a box, that he has never been so happy to have been so entirely wrong. 

He opens his arms to the stack of clothes lifted free, and holds them close against his chest.

“I know your closet’s full,” Matthew says, tossing another jumper onto the pile his poet holds. “We can keep my things in the spare bedroom, so you don’t have to -”

“Separate my things by use, and store the out-of-season ones down here? Don’t let me off the hook so easily - I’ve needed to do it for years,” Anthony says, with a small smile.

Matt smiles back.

Clothes take up most of their day, amusement in sifting through things that Anthony no longer wears but refuses to part with. Gaudy bright things, outdated things, old things. The better part of their unpacking involves a fierce game of dress up and laughter.

It is late afternoon when they close the bedroom closet, sorted for the two of them, and regard the world outside.

"Now the sun shall not roast us alive when we go," Matt reasons, nose wrinkling as he grins as his professor. "And we can watch the stars there as they fill the sky, away from the smog of the city."

"You bloody romantic."

"It rubbed off from you," Matt points out, kissing Anthony’s cheek before peeling his shirt from his body and moving past the poet to toss it in the heavy metal tub in their laundry room. "Should I grab one towel or two?" he calls.

For a moment Anthony can say nothing, as he hardly hears the question. He's bewitched, again, transfixed by the coil of muscle stretching lean across Matthew's back. That he's shorter than Anthony hardly matters; his strength is honed and exquisite. Broad shoulders and a narrow waist, skin that shines like molten bronze over sinuous tendons and taut sinews.

"Anthony," comes a voice through the animal fog that shortens his breath and tightens his groin. "Professor Dimmond."

Matthew laughs as Anthony blinks up to meet his eyes, his gaze narrowing. "Two," Anthony answers. "One to dry ourselves, and one to lay upon."

He dresses in a loose linen shirt and seersucker trousers. A chambray scarf wrapped loose around his throat and a straw boater atop his head. In his bag, Anthony packs a bottle of wine and his notebook, and nothing more.

The ride doesn't take terribly long, through Bury St. Edmund's and past Ipswich. Empty roads and open fields, the sun found and lost again and again behind fluffy clouds. Anthony listens as Matthew regales him with gossip about the crew; Anthony informs him at great length about the goings-on of their friends in Oxford. Their car - theirs for now, anyway - buzzes loud and the wind makes them raise their voices, but their laughs carry high and easy as they barrel towards the heaths and coastline of Suffolk. Anthony lounges sidelong in his seat, and Matthew wonders if Anthony has ever found a chair in which he can stand to sit properly, rather than draping himself lanky across it. Matthew holds the wheel with both hands, attentive, and Anthony wonders if he has always been so inclined towards goodness, or if he wishes to be for Anthony's sake.

When the sea spreads sparkling and smoke-dark before them, it hardly matters, and Anthony is first from the auto, hand upon his hat to keep it from blowing away.

"There's no one here," Matthew calls out, above the wind, as he fetches the towels from the boot. "It's summer, and there's no one here."

"There are better beaches, one assumes. Less desolate and forlorn. Should I wish for something so grand and banal, I'd go to Morocco. I prefer character,” he mutters, squinting into the wind as he ducks his head to light a cigarette.

Matt just watches him, beautiful and casually dressed down - for Anthony Dimmond, at least - hair battered by the wind. He is stunning. And the thought comes over Matthew that he is _his_ , Anthony is his, by choice, entirely. The giddiness wells up in his chest and Matt has to bite his lip to keep the sound inside. Instead, he gestures with a tilt of his head and they make their way towards the sand.

Once there, the wind eases, held at bay by high grassy hills overlooking the shore. It is incredible to see this place so quiet, the sand still hot beneath their feet from a summer’s day of the sun’s beating. Matt tosses their towels to the sand, takes Anthony’s bag to set carefully atop, to stop anything from being blown away should a surge of air come by, and yanks his shirt over his head.

He can see that Anthony watches him, can feel it, and with the childish joy that comes from the genuinely perfect sensation of being alive, Matthew pulls down his trousers and pants at once, and bare, with a whoop of pleasure, races to the breaking waves.

“Americans,” Anthony murmurs fondly, cheeks warm not from sun but from the contagious joy between them as Matthew hurtles himself into the waves.

He removes his hat, and his scarf follows, all tucked carefully into their bundle so as not to get caught in the wind. Cigarette held between his teeth, he unbuttons his shirt and considers not only their time together, but how long it has been only theirs. Matthew has never asked that they be exclusively partnered; he has never asked whether or not Anthony has been. In truth, there were few enough interested in whom Anthony was interested in return - too close to home or too far from his desires. And for those who might have made the cut, Anthony had convinced himself of myriad reasons why he could not, would not, did not wish to.

Never, since emerging from boyhood with an ache between his legs for hard lips and calloused hands, firm muscle and broad male bodies, has Anthony been so monogamous as he has since the arrival of Matthew Brown.

Never, not even for Hannibal, for this length of time.

“Tell me we didn’t drive all the way here so you can just stand there smoking,” Matthew calls out, shoving his hair back from his face with both hands, water sparkling against his skin.

“Good things take time, my darling. Patience is a virtue,” purrs Anthony, unfastening his trousers to let them fall. Bare beneath, bare entirely now, he winds his way to the water, and flicks his cigarette away. “Is it terribly cold?”

Matt watches him, the warm summer sun low, now, and painting his skin a sepia tea-stained brown. He looks beautiful, like a statue of a Greek god. Without thinking too much on it, Matt takes the steps necessary to wrap his cold arms around Anthony and fall back into the water, taking his poet with him.

“Frightfully,” Matt replies, laughing as Anthony splutters and curses at the temperature. They will grow used to it quickly, he knows, but the delight in watching Anthony shiver, glaring narrow-eyed at Matthew, is well worth the time it will take. Matt presses salty lips to Anthony’s and pushes back with a bright splash. “Catch me!”

“And if I don’t?”

“I’ll keep swimming! All the way back to Baltimore!”

“You’re going the wrong direction,” Anthony tells him, jerked stiff by another shiver before he spreads his arms before him and kicks off the sandy soil beneath. “You’ll end up in Amsterdam, daft boy, don’t your schools teach geography?”

He bends at the waist and dives, disappearing sleek beneath the water. Matthew laughs and turns to swim properly, strong arms pulling him quick, but not quick enough. With a yelp, he goes under, Anthony’s hand around his ankle, but a swift kick against the water frees him and Anthony relents, rising languid to the surface with a laugh.

Matthew is a powerful swimmer, strong in the water as he is plowing an oar through it. It is entirely his element, entirely his domain and kingdom. He breaks the water a few feet away and flicks his wet hair from his eyes with a grin. He watches Anthony, treads water and keeps his place, then slowly, silently, he slips beneath the waves and disappears.

For a good few moments, Anthony doesn’t see him, not farther out and not behind himself, and when the length of time grows almost too long to bear he makes a sound, worried. Perhaps Matthew dove too far and hit his head, perhaps he got tangled and sunk, perhaps something prevented him from coming up, grinning and wild, and he’s alone and cold trapped beneath the waves.

Anthony runs a hand over his face and takes a breath preparing to dive before sleek arms slip around him and a hot kiss is pressed to his shoulder.

“Your heart’s going so fast,” Matt whispers, curling his legs around Anthony as well, settling against his back as the water moves them in gentle undulations, up and down. “Did you miss me?”

Anthony expels a sigh, explosive, and treads the water slowly beneath them to keep them both afloat. One foot kicking harder than the other, he pivots until they face, and squints his displeasure. “So much so that all at once I saw my life flash before my eyes.”

Matthew wrinkles his nose, grinning. “Really?”

“It happened very quickly, for there would not have been much left of it, when I dove down to save you from the ill fates I imagined, and found myself drowned in turn.”

“You’re hopeless,” Matt grins, but his smile softens when he sees the genuine concern there, and he presses a warm and chaste kiss to Anthony’s lips. “I can hold my breath for a long time,” he promises. “I’ve been able to since I was a kid. You won’t lose me to the sea, not ever.”

Careful fingers card through Anthony’s hair and Matt nuzzles him, gentle and warm. Only a wicked grin suggests something is afoot before Matt’s legs squeeze tighter to his teacher and he drops back into the water, hands pushing against it to drop himself to the sand below, legs clasped hard around Anthony to pull him down too.

He kisses him beneath the water, for as long as they can hold their breath before they both surface.

Anthony curses, laughing, tugged close again by the strong boy at his side. He leans against him, as together they rise and fall with the steady waves. “If that,” he breathes, chest heaving, “if that is how I were to die -”

“You won’t.”

“- I could not think of a more blissful way to go,” Anthony finishes, grinning as he’s kissed. He tilts their brows together. He nuzzles and turns, hands curling through Matthew’s hair. “Pulled willing beneath the waves by a beautiful young man, yielding my breath to him in a plunging kiss. My very own merman, come to drown me in delight. Again,” he laughs, suddenly young, suddenly alive even as he claims to court death. “Take me down again.”

Matt laughs and does, a careful control of both their bodies, of his own breathing to soothe and calm Anthony’s. He holds Anthony’s face in his hands and kisses him beneath the water, the heavy hum of the ocean the only sound they hear beyond the beating of their hearts in their ears. When Matt releases them, they slip to the surface and float together, fingers entwined, eyes closed against the sunset sky.

“I love you,” Matt whispers, feeling his lips curl upwards before he bites one.

Anthony’s smile widens, spreads, parts into a laugh as he brings a damp hand to his eyes. “I know,” he murmurs. “I know you do, stubborn, beautiful thing.” There is a pause, almost audible. He grins, cracking open an eye to watch Matthew watching him, expectant. “Needy, too. I love you,” he finally relents, training down his smile as Matthew’s widens in turn. “I love you, Matthew Brown, beyond logic or comprehension. I love you terribly. Wonderfully. Only.”

“Only?” Matthew asks, brow lifting, the underlying question clear, if good-natured.

“In this way, yes,” Anthony muses. “Not even for Hannibal would I have attempted what we have. It may be a surprise to you, shocking even, but I’ve a reputation for being somewhat promiscuous.”

“No shit,” Matt feigns shock, laughing and catching his breath just in time before he’s playfully pushed under. He comes up with a flick of his hair and stands beside Anthony as he floats. He says nothing else, the words hang warm around him like an embrace. He knows, through exposure, now, through reassuring conversations with Will when they sit outside and smoke as Winston devours a bone in the garden, that Anthony will always love Hannibal, and that Hannibal will always love him. He’s found, despite himself, that he is glad for it. It is a different love. It is a necessary love.

Matt walks on tiptoes to stand behind Anthony’s head, bending to kiss his forehead before gently taking his shoulders and drawing him back to shallower waters. Anthony floats, lets himself be held and maneuvered. The easier it gets for Matthew to stand the more he kisses Anthony beneath him. Against his cheeks, his nose, his forehead, down to his lips, gently tilting his chin to so their mouths slot together.

By the end of it, Matthew sits in the sand in the shallows, Anthony against him in a comfortable doze, stroking his hair and watching the sun set before them over the water. This, he thinks. This is happiness. He starts to talk, a murmuring warmth that he bends to Anthony’s hair once in a while as his fingers card through it. He murmurs and nuzzles and laughs when Anthony accuses him of quoting his own work back at him.

“You’re the best poet I know for the occasion,” Matt reasons, grinning.

“That says more about the education you’re receiving than my scribblings,” snorts Anthony. “Wholly inadequate, both.”

“You don’t mean that,” Matthew says. “You always say those things, that your poetry’s no good, that you’re a hack, but you don’t believe it.”

“Oh?”

“If you did, you wouldn’t spend so long on every word. If you did, you wouldn’t go to the writers’ parties in London. You wouldn’t scour the reviews -”

“- and save only the worst of them?”

“But you spend longer reading the good ones,” Matt points out. “I think you not only like the praise, you crave it. Will says -”

“Mr. Graham is a mechanic. Unless he’s fixing a bent spoke on my bike, I hardly pay him heed.”

“He says that’s why I’m good for you. One of the reasons,” grins Matt. “You need to be adored, and all I want in the world is to adore you.”

Matt doesn’t explain why Anthony needs it, pieced together from what his poet and Will have told him, joined by what he’s discovered himself. Anthony turns to lay facing Matthew, the surf foaming around them as the older man kisses the salt from Matt’s throat. A child, hurtled out into the world with spite and violence. A young man lost, seeking family in many poor choices and a few good ones that could not stay. A boy who at his core has always sought for nothing more than to matter to someone.

Anthony rocks downward as he drags their lips together and the ocean rushes against their bodies. His only intent is contact, warmth, heat shared between. Breath roiling to a moan as their lips part enough to draw air, Anthony twists to draw himself up again and stretches, grasping for their things.

“No.”

“Matthew -”

“No,” he declares again, grabbing Anthony tightly around his waist. They turn to their sides as Anthony scrambles, sputtering in the surf, laughing and coughing all at once.

“Mr. Brown, unhand me, I need to reach my things.”

He is allowed, centimetre by centimetre, to scrabble closer to his bag. The bottle of wine rolls out but thankfully stops in a little dune beside. Anthony squints, grasping, fingers and arm stretched to shaking as Matthew holds him fast. Finally, finally, he unsettles his bag enough that a black drawing charcoal rolls loose, and with a yelp of triumph, Anthony seizes it.

Matt watches him, his face pressed to the sand, smile bright just above it so as not to get any in his mouth.

“Instead of the wine he seeks for a pen,” he murmurs. “What sanity was left, was never seen again.” He pushes himself up a little more and laughs when Anthony raises an eyebrow. He has encouraged Matt to write more, and though the boy never wants his work to be seen by anyone but Anthony and the inside of a trash can, he isn’t bad. He cannot form his thoughts poetically, but he certainly has them. Many a night is spent just talking together about sensations and situations, Anthony writing down and scribbling out words when better ones could be found.

“Here,” Anthony points, reaching to flatten one of their towels out onto the sand just above the waterline. “On your stomach please.”

“Here?” Matt laughs, though he does crawl where he’s told. “Professor Dimmond, really, in such a public place?”

A swift slap to Matthew’s bottom in retribution pulls a laugh from him and leaves red fingerprints in its wake. Anthony’s smile lingers as Matt squirms, delighted as much by anticipation as the satisfaction of it. Rubbing his cheek against his arm, Matt peeks back over his shoulder when there’s a quiet _click_ , and he bites his lip as Anthony straddles his thighs.

“You know how this must look,” Matthew says, and it only brings another ruffle of pleasure to the poet in response. Indeed, his cock rests soft - and woefully smaller than normal - against the crevice of Matthew’s backside. For a moment, Anthony is distracted by the sight of it, bare skin against bare skin. He spares a thought of thanks to whatever queer gods oversee them both that they have survived to be here now, neither executed nor imprisoned, healthy and whole.

Anthony leans low, and warms a kiss against Matthew’s shoulder.

“Good,” he decides. “Let them see that creation can be more than birth - that it comes from more than mere mating.” Arching back, one hand against Matthew’s shoulder, Anthony sets soft charcoal to Matthew’s skin, leaving black words in its wake. “Let them see that we, too, are capable of heavenly consummation.”

Matthew laughs, but it’s just a shiver of movement, he doesn’t displace Anthony from his back, he doesn’t disrupt his deliberate lines against Matthew’s skin. For a while he lies as still as he can, the words spilling down his back as the sea dries against it.

“It tickles,” he whispers, turning to look over his shoulder again as Anthony looks up at him and smiles, keeps his eyes on Matt as he bends to kiss the base of his back in worship.

“Lay still.”

“I’ll try,” Matt laughs, curling his fingers in the towel as he watches Anthony shift down his body, as he feels the implement trace patterns of cursive against his skin. “Will you read it to me?”

“When I’m done,” Anthony murmurs, lifting his untensil in consideration. “If it’s something worth reading for more than the medium on which it’s written.”

“The medium insists,” grins Matthew.

“The medium is being a distraction.”

Another kiss lingers long against the rise of Matt’s tailbone, and he lifts his hips a little in response. Settling slow, as another word is added, he closes his eyes as the setting sun pours amber and gold across his lids. His cock stirs, a little, at the feeling of his poet so near, at the touches they share. But his heart stirs more and it is all Matthew can do to remain still and not coil laughing in joy just to relieve the feeling of beating wings from inside his chest. Anthony Dimmond is here with him. Anthony Dimmond is writing poetry for him. Anthony Dimmond is writing poetry for him, here, upon his bare body, their legs tangled together and toes pushed into the sand.

Matthew draws a breath as Anthony returns the charcoal to a place he’s already written, and he shakes his head. “No,” Matt whispers. “No, leave it. Don’t mark it out.”

“There is another word -”

“This one is perfect.”

“You can hardly know.”

“The medium insists,” Matt replies, snorting into his hands when there is a kiss placed just behind his ear in response, nuzzled there deliberately to tickle.

“The medium -”

“Has power of veto,”

“Terrible thing,” Anthony sighs, but the word remains as he wrote it initially, unchanged at Matthew’s insistence. He returns to marking the hills and valleys of Matthew’s exceptional ass, words sliding and arching against the pert muscle. Then down, to the delicate and sensitive area just beneath the curve of his bottom, that’s where the softest words go, the kindest, the most secret. As Matt arches, Anthony slips a hand beneath him to stroke, teasing, just once.

“I hope you won’t think me trite in telling you that I’ve never seen my words come so alive as this,” Anthony says, relenting to run his hands along the outside of Matthew’s thighs, as he reads silently over the lines again.

“I hope you won’t think me disrespectful,” Matthew laughs, “to tell you that the tide is coming in, and you’re going to lose your poem if you don’t copy it down.”

Anthony smiles a little, tilting his head, and then he shakes it softly, once. And he reads, voice low, warmth enough in it that even Matthew’s shivering soothes. Whatever word or line Anthony was going to rewrite defies Matthew; each and every one is perfectly made, and he can imagine no others in their place. A sonnet, adhering to form and function both, but like a garden spilling untended with morning glories bursting blue and violet against the walls, the meaning grows wild beyond its shape. It is an ode to Matthew; an ode to them both, as a whole, two boys who became themselves within the sea and spilled forever flourishing as foam across the waves.

He sighs, softly, and strokes the bare thighs of his muse. “I’m not going to copy it,” Anthony says. “We will let the sea wash it away. It will exist here and now, nowhere else. Even if we forget the words, if they change with each recollection, they will grow within us from this moment onward, ours alone.”

“No,” Matt protests, but he can feel the water lap against his toes, and sighs, resigned, against the towel, eyes focused on the middle distance where the sand lays dark in hills and lines before him. He tries to remember the words, he tries to remember the rhythm and metaphor, but all he can remember when he closes his eyes is the sensation of the marks against his skin, of the words read to him.

“You’re extraordinary,” Matt murmurs, turning to his side to welcome Anthony against him, chest to chest. They will have to move, or the towel and their things will grow wet, but they do not have to move yet, not for a few moments more. He traces a smudge of black on Anthony’s lip and leans in to kiss it clean. “How many words have you let free this way? To ride the wind and get breathed into the lungs of unsuspecting lucky men and women?”

Anthony leans again to taste his student’s sweetness, and brings his hands to Matthew’s back. The words spread slick beneath his fingers, worked into their skin and lost in meter but held in meaning.

“None,” Anthony laughs. “None like this. You’ve seen me work, any beauty that flowers in my words I prune viciously in rewriting. I smother my children in their cradle.” He tilts their noses together, sighing against Matthew’s mouth. “What a pleasure it is to let them live and breathe and go. Thank you.”

He presses close again, but no sooner does his hand circle Matt’s hip and dip lower than an unruly wave washes beneath them. Anthony yelps, laughing, caught in the spray as their towel is soaked and Matthew stumbles to his feet to save their things.

“I’ve been abandoned,” declares Anthony, alarmed. He splays along his back, crying out a giddy curse when another wave washes over him. One hand extends towards Matt, helpless. “Farewell, savage world. Taken not in the prime of life but in the dredges of it, too old to even leave a lovely corpse behind. Better consumed by the sea -”

Matthew laughs too hard to even reply, tossing the sopping towel to the sand farther away, dragging their bag and spare towel up towards it. Only then does he reach for his lover, wallowing in the warm shallow water as the sky above them darkens to indigo-blue. With a yelp of his own, Matt gets dragged down into the water too, splashing in the foam as he presses close to Anthony and cradles his head so he doesn’t get submerged.

And then he kisses him.

“Better consumed by me,” Matt whispers to him. “When I bring you home and we share a shower and a hot meal. Then I can consume you. We have all the time in the world.”

The words wash away with every wave of the sea, with every brush of Anthony’s fingers and Matthew feels giddy for it. Giddy for all of it. For this freedom they have, to enjoy each other on a lonely empty shore, freedom to write words that no one but they will ever read or hear, and then let them go. In the cold of Baltimore, he had never imagined this, in his tiny room, hiding his books and his thoughts behind forced smiles and hard work. He had imagined Anthony Dimmond, he had never imagined this.

“We’ll freeze,” he whispers. “We’ll freeze, you silly man, get up.”

“Won’t you warm me?” Anthony teases, grinning as he seeks another kiss and finds himself denied.

“I will. I will with a hot bath and warm food and blankets,” promises Matt. He slides free of Anthony’s arms and takes his hands, dragging him to his knees and to his feet as the tide rolls in around them. Their fingers free and Anthony presses his to Matthew’s cheeks, kissing him as they walk forward and back respectively, staggering steps up the beach to gather their things.

They will lay together tonight, sharing a bed that belongs to two, now, not only one.

They will wake together tomorrow, taking turns at assembling breakfast, to feed the other with their fingers.

And the next day and the next and the next, with all the time in the world to press beauty to the other’s skin.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Won’t you please tell me,” Matt says, swaying slightly even as he holds on to his professor and makes him sway too. “Please, please tell me what horrid things my tutor has said?”_
> 
> _“God,” laughs Anthony, relenting easily, so easily, for Matthew as he would for no one else in the world. “I love it when you beg."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta'd by our beloved [Noodle](http://noodletheelephant.tumblr.com/)!

Matt’s favourite chair is the old worn wingback by the fireplace. It doesn’t quite face it, but is positioned in such a way as to get enough warmth to remain comfortable even in the coldest nights in winter. If he comes home earlier than Anthony, which happens three out of the five days they go to the university, he curls up on the chair with a study book, or something from their bursting bookshelves, and sinks into the comfort of reading.

He’s found a way to curl up so that all his limbs are within the plush limits of the chair, head against one of the wings, toes pushed beneath the flattened pillow against one arm.

He is in this chair when Anthony comes home. He smiles and unfurls himself from it and stretches before going to greet his partner with a warm kiss. Then another, and another. It is rare they succeed in a single kiss only when they are not in company, and even then the company hardly minds, sharing fond affections of their own.

“No practice tomorrow morning,” Matt purrs warm against Anthony’s ear, wrapping strong arms around his shoulders and walking backwards as Anthony walks forwards until they have a wall to press against. “The river is too cold. Unsafe to train in such conditions.”

“What absolute dreck,” Anthony says, with enormous delight. He drops his bag to the floor, unminded, and hoists Matthew by his thighs. Pinned between professor and wall, Matt curls his legs around Anthony’s hips. “Just because there’s great sheets of spiky ice upon the Cam, you lazy lot call it unsafe.”

“We’re rowing crew, not re-enacting the sinking of the Titanic.”

“Too soon,” scolds Anthony, before smiling into another kiss, slowly savoring the sweetness of milky tea on his student’s lips. He sucks the bottom one between his own, eyes opening hooded when Matthew moans little and lofty in pitch. Anthony draws back to release him, but tucks their foreheads together instead, settling his breath to the same ease as Matt’s, taking in the familiar scent of home. “More time for you to work on your papers then,” he adds, wry.

“I shall be entirely studious,” Matthew promises, eyes hooded as well, smile languid as he breathes warm against his lover. “Work naked wrapped in a sheet by the fire, books spread out around me as I meticulously learn the anatomical structure of the human male.”

“On yourself?”

“I happen to be a fine specimen of the species,” Matt points out, grinning, grinding down gently against Anthony’s hips. “A good study.”

“And a good student, besides,” Anthony allows, ducking his head to watch the lazy undulations of Matthew’s groin against his own. “Or so I hear.”

The movements pause. “What have you heard?”

Feline triumph narrows Anthony’s eyes and he lets Matthew return to his feet, sweeping a kiss across his cheek before he takes up his bag. He shrugs, a single elegant lift of his shoulder, as he pads on socked feet to the kitchen.

“What have you heard?” Matt asks again, in pursuit.

“Perhaps something. Perhaps nothing. It would be untoward to gossip,” he says, peeking into the kettle. “Wouldn’t you agree?”

“Oh, entirely,” Matt nods, padding after him in socks as well - too cold in the house for bare feet, even for him. “Yet you brought it up, as a teasing little tidbit, meaning that you have, indeed, spoken to someone and you have, indeed, heard something. And as you brought it up, fishing, as you are, for attention, I am simply obligated to give it. Out of love and endless devotion, of course, I am entirely uncaring for the information itself, I’m hardly involved. Tell me.”

“Later,” purrs Anthony, helping himself to tea from the still-steaming kettle. “Since you’re entirely uncaring, I can’t imagine it would matter when we discuss what your tutor told me.”

Matthew blinks, and squints at his professor, pleased with himself as the cat that got the cream. “You spoke with my tutor.”

“Counselors often do. Once or twice a term, at least, to compare notes on the students under their care,” Anthony tells him. He tips his cup as if in toast, and sips contentedly as he watches Matthew from across the counter. “How was your day?”

Matthew blinks again, then narrows his eyes at Anthony before crossing his arms casually against himself. Then he leans on the counter, feigning disinterest.

“Fairly uneventful,” he admits. “Classes have started to seem less and less full, I hear that happens, sometimes, when students simply decide that staying at home warm by the fire is a better option than trudging college to college.”

“Or the library,” Anthony adds, sipping more tea. “A huge fireplace in there, rather lovely.”

“Or the library,” Matt cedes, grinning. “I, however, spent it in classes. Working diligently on study for the upcoming exams. Perhaps why I will pay no damned attention at all to what you spoke of, until we speak of it. I am confident it was all good.”

Anthony snorts. “And there’s that tongue.”

“You love that tongue,” Matt smiles wide. “Deep inside your ass just shifting, just… barely.” His eyes narrow again and he rests his head against his crossed arms. He sees the shiver that runs through Anthony at the mention of rimming, at the thought that they could do it, now, entirely uncaring for the lateness of the hour they will finish because neither have an early morning. When Anthony steps back as though to lead them on, Matt clicks his tongue.

“Not,” he repeats slowly, “any damned attention, sir. Not at all.”

Matthew’s words sink in slowly, but surely, as Anthony’s steps slow. He brings his tea to his lips again, humming as he sucks his bottom lip in thought. It is a challenge, certainly. But Matthew’s youthful virility is counterbalanced by his stubbornness, and Anthony’s unfortunate practice in involuntary celibacy is weighed against his innate and constant desire for sex.

They are holding at check, with a potential _mate_ to be added to it.

Anthony releases a long sigh, looking heavenward as if for mercy, and then he continues on. Towards the stairs, taking his bag with him, with nary a glance towards Matthew still malingering in the kitchen.

“Shame, really,” he remarks as he pads upstairs. “Knowing how readily my tongue responds to yours.”

Matt waits, he stands at the counter and tries, he _tries_ not to go upstairs and fall to Anthony’s will. He tries. But lord that man knows how to work his own manipulations, and he always, always finds a way to win in challenges like these. With a soft curse, Matt follows him up, after checking the door is locked. Step after step he tries to put on an expression of displeasure, step after step his grin grows wider still.

“Anthony Dimmond, you are a menace,” he says, wrapping his arms around Anthony’s middle where he stands working free his tie, smile delighted, chin lifted in his pleasure. “A temptation and a wonder, and utterly terrible. _Entirely terrible_ ,” he mutters in Spanish, to Anthony’s great delight.

“Won’t you please tell me,” Matt says, swaying slightly even as he holds on to his professor and makes him sway too. “Please, please tell me what horrid things my tutor has said?”

“God,” laughs Anthony, relenting easily, so easily, for Matthew as he would for no one else in the world. “I love it when you beg. We met this evening, which is why I’m late in coming home.”

“And?”

“We’ve had very little reason to meet, generally, with no concerns between us.”

“And?”

“Did you know his wife is with child again? Their fourth, they’re hoping for a little girl this time -”

“ _Anthony!_ ” Matthew laughs, helpless. He drops to his knees and Anthony turns to watch him, grinning, as his lover becomes every bit the desperate university student. He lays his hand upon Matt’s cheek, thumb stroking lightly.

“He said that you’re cleverer than you think you are, and that your papers have been commendable. You’ve given your partner pause, often, with your arguments, though of course he’s far too English to show it. Your laboratory work is consistent, which matters far more than being prone to bursts of the extraordinary, and should you seek a higher station than nursing, it would be surprising were one not made available to you if your studies maintain their quality.”

Anthony pauses.

“He also said that you have an unfortunate tendency in attempting to ingratiate yourself,” Anthony murmurs, wryly amused. “And that it is unnecessary, when your work speaks for itself.”

Matt’s cheeks warm, just a little, just across his nose, and his ears shift when he smiles wider at the praise. He had worried, and in truth still does, that any misstep will have him returned to Baltimore, will have him taken away from Anthony. Their relationship, though not public by any means, is always on the fringes of being noticed and known. He leans to press his face against Anthony’s clothed thighs and lets his eyes close.

“Are you proud?” Matthew asks him softly, words muffled by the thin wool of Anthony’s trousers.

Long fingers stroke through cropped hair, again and again, slow and reassuring. “Mr. Brown,” Anthony says, with a little sigh and a soft smile. “I told him the truth.”

Matthew lifts his eyes.

“Not of this,” Anthony says, “but of your time in my office as a student, visiting his counselor, augmented perhaps by the amount of care and effort I see you put nightly into your essays, around all manner of distraction. I told him that rarely in my time teaching here have I had the pleasure of advising a student who cares so genuinely for his work. I told him that you are motivated by a guileless heart, for greater things than merely rowing down the Cam. It is unusual to find a student who cares to maintain their work. It is extraordinary to find one who derives joy from it.”

He draws a breath and adds, with a grin, “And I relented in trying to coax him to let you take papers in poetry instead, when medicine is so perfectly suited for your temperament.”

Matt’s eyes narrow and his entire expression warms with pleasure. Despite his apparent ease with students and teachers alike, despite his open and welcoming and playful demeanor, Anthony Dimmond is not a man easily impressed or lightly swayed. Though Matt no longer needs, for himself, the constant reassurance that he is wanted here, the words slip against his skin like a warm silk scarf.

“I already have the best teacher for poetry,” Matthew tells him, cocking his head to nuzzle into the hand that touches him, familiar and rough and warm, always warm. “Your tongue moves my own as mine does yours, after all.”

Matt doesn’t move to stand, he just shifts a little to sit higher and works Anthony’s shirt from his pants to kiss the soft warmth of his stomach.

“Matthew,” Anthony murmurs, resting his fingers beneath Matt’s chin to lift it. “You needn’t -”

“I’m not,” he says with a little laugh. “Not for that.”

With a sigh, Anthony lets the professorship ease from his shoulders and his voice. With a crooked smile, he eases back from being this student’s counselor, to being this man’s lover instead. Matthew’s palms spread up across Anthony’s belly, beneath his loosened shirt, and Anthony finishes pulling loose his tie to toss it aside.

“In that case,” he laughs, “proceed. Do with me what you will.”

"Oh, I certainly will do plenty," Matt promises. But despite the cocky tone and playful words, he doesn't rush the undressing. He takes his time to explore Anthony with his lips and tongue, nuzzling the soft fuzz on his belly, kissing up past his navel, working open button after button to bare him.

Slowly, he stands, mouth still navigating the familiar valleys and divots on Anthony's body. He knows him so well now, this body that he loves, the heart within that loves him back, the soul deeper still that meets with Matthew's and makes him feel alive.

"I'm going to have you in bed for hours tonight," Matt murmurs, kissing a nipple, fingers splayed against the other, just tickling gently with the shivering passes of skin over skin. "Taste every inch of you. Mark some spots I am particularly fond of, return to others I just can't get enough of..."

He parts his lips over the graceful jut of a collarbone and sucks, hard, moaning low when Anthony presses his hands against him, as much to hold him close as to push him back. Fingernails draw goosebumps along the back of Matt's neck, their bodies entangled as they step together, their mouths ensnared. Anthony would deny himself this pleasure if Matthew willed it so; he would not seek another. He would content himself with whatever closeness he would be afforded by this stubborn student he cannot help but spoil. What delights the body yields pale in compare to the company they share.

Their kiss breaks with a moan as Anthony finds himself turned and bounced to the bed.

Thank _God_ it's not come to that.

"Slower," Anthony laughs, watching Matthew unbutton his shirt, and tug down his suspenders to slap against his thighs. The poet lifts his hips and tugs his pants off, cock already rising half-hard and filling flushed with every pulse. Matthew raises a brow, amused, and takes his time on each button; Anthony takes his time grasping his length just so, and pulling it stiff in steady tugs.

They are amenable, both, to whatever position in which they find themselves. Sometimes it varies by mood, other times by desire; just as often, there is no rhyme or reason for the formation of their coupling. Anthony is just as happy to bury himself inside Matthew and hear his voice rise pleading as he is to be pinned beneath his strong, capable lover and fucked speechless.

"This is what I could not tell your tutor," Anthony purrs, skin whispering against skin as he strokes himself, watching every inch of skin that Matthew bares for him. "How beautiful you are, clothed or nude. How kind you are, despite my terrible moods. How very thick your cock, upon my tongue, enough to fill my throat entirely."

Matt grins and bites his lip, watching Anthony unfurl in pleasure on the bed for him. He will have him, tonight, before both grow hungry for dinner and return to the kitchen to make it. Then they will stumble back to bed and fall into a pile of sleepy tangled limbs until morning.

He loves him.

That sensation still makes Matt shiver toes to ears. He loves him. And Anthony loves him back. 

"Do you suppose he would be jealous?" he asks, letting his shirt slip down his arms before he turns gracefully around to allow his poet a nice view of his back, working the cuffs free and tossing it away.

“Christ,” whispers Anthony, bending from the bed as he fists his cock faster. “Look at you.”

“You’re going to climax before I even get my clothes off.”

“And then lay here sticky and let you lick me clean? What a shame that would be,” Anthony grins, but he slows his tugging all the same, rolling his fingers tighter in languid pulses against his shaft.

“Jealous of me being fucked into the sheets by you? No, I imagine not,” he continues. “Jealous of the freedom we have to do so, unbound by familial duty, unbound to any but the other? Entirely so. I suspect that’s why it’s illegal,” Anthony muses, though his breath hitches as Matthew pulls his trousers down over the pert swell of his bottom, a flash of soft, heavy balls between his legs. “Less a matter of antiquated morality than it is spiteful punishment. As they gather their bleating children like sheep to herd them to family dinners with in-laws whom they hate, they must look upon us with envy for being so unburdened.”  
Matt snorts, shaking his head, and tosses his clothes, suspenders still attached, to the floor uncaring. He bends, deliberately, to slip off his socks, shivering a little in the relative cool of the room before turning to face Anthony properly, hard and spread and ready on the bed for him. His cock twitches at the sight.

“I suppose it would be considered scandalous,” he says, setting one knee, then the other, to the bed and crawling on all fours towards his poet. “The two of us showing up at an antiquated family gathering. For Thanksgiving turkey.” He sets his hands on either side of Anthony’s hips and grins at him. “Can you imagine, us, the civilized of the entire congregation, them the mess of hormones and emotions and lack of reason. Jealous. Ugly. Simpering for even a moment of what we share together?”

He laughs, a single pleased sound, and ducks his head to lick up Anthony’s stomach to his chest, pressing a kiss when their lips come together.

“I pity them, the sad little things,” he says, sighing cool breath against the wet skin he had licked. “They must be so bored.”

The words sing to Anthony, rewriting the dirges long droned within his soul. Illumination sparks and catches into flame, his skin heating, his heart racing. Ideals for which Anthony once proclaimed as if he were their herald, the superiority of love like theirs against the tired tedium of typical relations. Ideals he forsook when his lovers departed him one by one; ideals he reviled when his life dimmed to shadows and cobwebs of the glory in which he once flourished.

He stretches long, heels pressing into the bed to push himself back, with Matt in pursuit and finally pinning him with enough force for Anthony to laugh, limbs coiling around his lover.

“Where they are bound by duty and obedience, to maintain jobs they hate in order to support families they were forced to create and now are forced to support,” Anthony murmurs. “Carrying on lineages that with enough time will be rendered forgotten. We are free instead to create things that last, beautiful immortality in words and deeds and song and music. We are free to love and live in whatever way best suits us, in whatever moment.”

He grasps Matthew’s hair at the nape of his neck and drags their mouths together, snaring Matthew’s bottom lip between his teeth and tugging with a grin, a snarl.

“We are heirs,” he whispers when he lets Matt free again, “to a legacy that has always been, and always will be.”

The words pull fire and shivers down Matthew’s skin, and he kisses Anthony again, glad to have him home, glad to have him near and close and wanting him, just him. Ardent kisses and panting breaths, hums of delight as Matt seeks blindly, knowing the contours of Anthony’s body so well, to grasp behind his knees and slip him down the bed again.

More kisses, more licks, more heat from wet lips until he reaches Anthony’s cock and deliberately ignores it. The heady smell is intoxicating, familiar, tempting, so tempting, but Matt resists. There will be time enough to take Anthony into his mouth and feel him shudder at the sensation. All the time in the world, in fact, granted by themselves to themselves.

Instead, Matt seeks lower, to the soft curve of thigh, to the hollow of an elegant hip, down and down as Anthony spreads for him, to kiss against his hole, once, twice, before flicking his tongue, tickling, over and over the hot skin there, teasing and playing. Then Matthew holds him, hands gentle and guiding and deliberate in how he spreads Anthony and tilts him, before he licks thick and long up to his balls and takes them into his mouth.

Anthony's curse is a sinner's prayer. His body shudders, every muscle loosening and tightening in a wave that finally frees a groan against his hand, fingers splaying over his face. He rests the other, shaking, in Matthew's hair and clings weakly. The pressure builds in his belly with each suck or swirl or rocking of Matt's tongue; every lurid wet noise sows goosebumps over Anthony's skin. In his blind twisting he starts to bring his legs together, but Matthew's hand against a thigh holds him flat.

Matthew sucks hard, stretching long, to release Anthony's balls with a pop. He waits only long enough for the poet to draw a breath before lifting his hips higher, pushing Anthony to his shoulders, and licking low again. Over wrinkled skin that twitches sensitive and parts for him, clenches, pulses like Anthony's heart; inside, twisting into that tight heat, to savor the musky taste of the man he loves.

Anthony grips his cock beneath its corona to squeeze and hold his orgasm at bay, breath already hitching so short that he'd be dizzy from that alone if not the sensations themselves.

"Whomever," Anthony whispers, trembling, "in whatever number, allowed you practice to grow so skilled at this, deserves a commendation from the bloody Queen."

“I’ll pass your name on for consideration, then,” Matt murmurs, eyes hooded as he continues his deliberate worship of the poet beneath him. There is such an intimacy to this, exploring the other’s body just to see how they respond. Matt closes his eyes as he does, just to feel everything, to let every sense but sight work for him. He listens to the hitched breath, he listens to the way his mouth sounds against wet skin, sloppy and filthy and perfect.

Anthony squirms, always. He can’t sit still. Not when he’s reading or writing, not when he’s lecturing, arms spread wide to articulate the grandeur of the words and meanings when his explanation cannot. He is constant motion, constant warm energy. He is perfection in his flaws, he is exceptional in all the normal things he does.

This is love, Matt things, and laughs, humming, pleased, as Anthony squirms against him even more for the sensation. Beneath his tongue, Anthony seems to unfold for him, muscles that tighten in bliss relax with a sweeping kiss or a gentle suckle. His legs splay and close, his hips lift and lower, a thousand little undulations that Matthew can feel - each and every one - against his mouth, as if Anthony’s body worships Matt in return for his own reverence. And his voice, cracking high and plummeting low, curses and wordless moans, is a poetry all its own, meter marked by heartbeats and the rhythm of their own making.

A long leg sweeps over Matthew’s head and Anthony turns to his belly, fingers gathering the blankets and lanky body stretching leonine. He presents himself with abandon, back bent and hips tilted, dark eyes bright beneath his greying hair as he watches over his shoulder. Anthony’s cock stands stiff between his legs, scarlet in its hardness, and dripping long strings of clear to the bed beneath.

“How lucky we are to have lived for so long apart, and to finally know the reason for our survival,” he whispers, with a rub of his cheek against the bed and a coy, crooked smile. “I can hardly imagine how I managed. Even my memories now find you in them, as if you had always been there with me.”

“Sap,” Matt whispers against him, kissing reverently over his tailbone, up Anthony’s spine as his cock presses slippery and warm between Anthony’s cheeks and rubs teasing there. He nuzzles into Anthony’s long, untamed hair, he presses his body against Anthony’s beneath him and sighs contented at how perfectly they fit. He rocks, deliberately teasing and slow against Anthony before slipping a hand between them to line himself up and slowly press in.

He pants his pleasure in heavy gasps against Anthony’s shoulders, smiling when his poet shudders and stretches and arches for him.

“God, you feel so fucking good,” Matt whispers.

Anthony's breath rushes from him in a little _oh_ , almost innocent in its delicate sweetness. He sucks his bottom lip into his mouth and holds it, voice catching like leaves in the wind of his breath to infuse it with sound. When he releases it again it's with a laugh, and a tilt of his head to nuzzle against the sheets.

"I love it when you're coarse with me," Anthony murmurs. "I love it when you curse. When you tell me what to do. When you - oh, God, Matthew," he groans, as Matt bucks his hips to bury himself entirely.

The sensitive skin of their balls, drawing tight in pleasure, brushes together. Thick curls of hair tickle Anthony's tongue-softened opening. Up all the length of his spine, he can feel Matthew's thickness fill him as if to split him in two, their pulses meeting in a clamor, heat and pressure against unyielding width, so deep inside his ass that Anthony can't breathe. He pulls against the sheets, hips thrusting against the air, each movement widening him more.

“Mmm, and I love to break your voice like that,” Matt tells him gently, nuzzling against him as he sets one hand to Anthony’s hip to hold him still, slowly pulling back and pushing in hard again. “You have a brilliant voice, a voice that fits the words you write, lyrical and warm, and when I can make it -” Another thrust, another sound from Anthony that shivers to a moan. “- snap, just like that, it’s exceptional.”

Matthew makes love meticulously, deliberately, with all of his thought in it when he shifts and buries himself. He is conscious of Anthony’s movements, of his desires, of his limits, he is conscious of the trembling and the begging, the arches and what they mean. He is entirely selfless when he makes love to Anthony, entirely selfish when he has Anthony in him in turn. 

He grins, bright, and bites against Anthony’s shoulder. “Tell me something,” he sighs. “Anything. I just want to hear you.”

"Now?" Anthony laughs, squirming back as Matt rocks away and earning a soft swat for his trouble. It coils him forward again with a groan buried into his arms, thighs shaking outside his control, toes curled tight. He is filled again slowly, every inch of Matthew felt through every inch of Anthony.

"Darling," the poet manages, whispering past dry, parted lips. "I can hardly breathe with you in me, let alone think of -"

"Anything," Matthew whispers. He holds Anthony still with hands on his hips, pressing little thrusts against his prostate, back and forth with the head of his cock. Matt grins bright as Anthony folds himself onto the bed with a shattered sound, quaking, his body flattening but for where Matthew keeps his ass aloft. "Anything, or I'll keep doing this -"

"Is that meant to be dissuasive?"

"It will be when I don't let you come."

Anthony bites his lip and releases it scraping through his teeth, whimpering. "I have always preferred a man who can move me," he admits, unable to ever still his tongue when so undone as this. "Truly move me. Strong enough to hold me down despite my height, broad enough for me to cling to without swaying. In body and words, _God_ , to be overpowered when I'm stubborn -"

"When aren't you?"

"Never," grins Anthony.

“You fucking lose it when I manhandle you,” Matt laughs, smiling wide when Anthony moans and clenches around him. Matt slips a hand down to curl around Anthony’s cock, teasing but not enough to have him come. Not yet. “Rant at me in the most pleasantly verbose way about how I have no right and I shouldn’t assume I do, but oh, do you fucking love it.”

Another slow grind, Matt’s hand curling slick around Anthony as his cock drips into his palm. He could torment him like this for a good long while, Anthony has exceptional stamina for being edged.

“I could keep you like this for hours,” he whispers. “Sit back and watch my cock slide into you over and over, spreading and stretching you wide. Listen as you moan for me - and you _know_ it will be for me, stubborn as you are - as you beg me, I tell you _no_. Should we do that?”

Anthony attempts to bring his hands beneath his chest and push himself up, but an expert downward twist of Matthew’s wrist brings him low again with another long, drawn out groan. “Terrible,” Anthony scolds him. “What have I ever done to deserve it? And as I’m letting you have me -”

“ _Letting_ me?” Matthew laughs. “You were all but _begging_ for it. What was it? My cock in your mouth so deep you can’t breathe?”

“And now using my words against me,” purrs Anthony, grinning wide as he’s brought back to his knees from where he'd begun to slide flat again. Skin whispers against skin as Matthew bends across his professor's back, driving into him in deep, short thrusts, each one snapping Anthony's voice shorter, higher, helpless. “Please -”

“No.”

“Mr. Brown -”

“Professor.”

“Please,” moans Anthony, laughing, almost sobbing as he’s fucked against the bed. The hot, firm body against his own, the pressure of Matthew’s cock stretching him wanton and wide, the talented fingers that once stroked their own to such bliss while reading Anthony’s torrid words - it’s all too much, it’s all too wonderful. “Please, Matthew, God, I love you.”

Matt sighs, delighted, eyes barely open, losing himself to his own pleasure in this. Being loved, being wanted, being begged and obeyed.

“I love you,” he whispers, pressing his forehead between Anthony’s sweaty shoulders. ”I love you, darling but no, no you will hold on for me." He allows Anthony a little reprieve, longer thrusts now, deliberate and deep, rather than the shallow teasing of before. He takes him, tastes the salt of sweat beneath his lips, the shudders that press from his poet’s back to his chest. Lord he is beautiful. He is so beautiful.

“A little more, come on,” Matt breathes.

"Tell me," Anthony begs. "Tell me," he pleads. "Tell me how much you love me."

He breaks, like winter ice giving way to spring sun. He breaks like soil giving way to growth, clouds to sky. No longer the stoic professor nor the stroppy poet, when Anthony pleads this way, he is only Anthony. Last name unknown, provenance forgotten, a beautiful boy who loves too hard and bears within him unhealing wounds in need of constant care. Constant affection. Constant love. His need is a hunger, so long starved that the feeling never fades.

Anthony curls, eyes closed and lips parted, and with every breath begs to be told he is special. That he matters.

That he is loved.

Matthew holds him, whispers to him that he loves him to the moon and back, that he loves him more than there are grains of sand on the ocean floor. He loves him in the early mornings and late at night, that he loves him when he frowns over his coffee, when he smiles at the sunlight touching his page and he watches it crawl there and dry his ink. Matthew tells him that he will never stop loving him, that he always has, and then he tells Anthony he can come.

And he does. Hard, hot pulses as he loses his voice to whimpers and sobs of pleasure as his body shudders in orgasm. Matt follows close after, unable to hold back with the way his beloved is shaking and whispering his name as though it were a prayer. Matthew knows prayer, he had spent years hoping it would save him from this, and years hearing silence. This is the closest he has ever come to sanctity, the closest he has ever come to enlightenment.

It is ironic and perfect that he finds both buried balls deep in the man he adores.

He nuzzles warm behind Anthony’s ear as they both catch their breath and come down from their pleasure. He slips free of his poet and wriggles closer to settle beneath Anthony’s draped arm. Kissing his cheek, his slack lips, his nose and delicate eyelids, he makes his love known here, as well, without a word spoken or needed.

Anthony’s smile is soft, almost bashful. His eyes are damp, long lashes dark, and he rubs them dry with a quick nuzzle to the bed before opening them just enough to watch Matthew watching him. A little wriggle brings them closer; their noses brush and their lips in turn. The kiss is simple and still and sweet. Another follows. Another.

“I lose myself when I’m with you,” Anthony tells him, as he brings his hand to Matthew’s hair to catch tiny curls around his fingers. “It’s as if all the ocean were in me, my blood the waves, you the tidal pull that moves them. Primordial truths I thought long ago washed away brought to the shore again. And every one of them,” he murmurs, looking between Matt’s eyes, “each that you find you treat as treasure. Surely for all my sin I do not deserve to be so fortunate,” he muses, with another little smile.

“You got a sinner for your sins,” Matt replies softly, sleepy already, and content just to doze together like this as the fire warms the floor below and their breath warms them here. Another nuzzle and Matt reaches to curl his hand with Anthony’s just gently holding to him, splaying their fingers together, curling them next, eyes hooded so he can watch.

“I love you,” he tells Anthony again, smiling just with his eyes as he lifts them. “For as long as our sinful life gives us, I always will.”

Anthony’s smile widens, enough that his eyes close. He pulls himself closer, again, until they’re tucked nearly one atop the other, and against Matthew’s cheek, he sighs. “Do you want to know something remarkable?”

“Always.”

“I believe you,” he says, and Matthew laughs. Anthony’s smile spreads to a grin, so wide his cheeks ache.

“That is remarkable.”

“And still less so than that I love you too. Just as much, and for just as long. However many days or weeks or months or years we’re granted,” Anthony whispers. “It is unconscionable to think of the extraordinary things you’ve shown me, had I continued to dismiss you as just another brash American boy. To have not known your remarkable history, to have not known your wit and drive -”

His voice breaks a little, as if it were an aftershock of the quakes that sundered him before. Matthew nuzzles his cheek, and Anthony draws a breath. “I laugh again, because of you. I write again, because of you. And because of you, Mr. Brown, I feel alive again.”

Matt can only smile, trying to keep his heart from bursting through his ribs in joy. At hearing the words, at knowing Anthony means them. This is beyond his childish desires and dreams, this is beyond everything entirely. And yet this is them. Together. For as long as they have.

“Sleep,” he whispers, wriggling enough to upset the blankets and drag them atop them both. “Sleep and then I shall make you dinner. Tea. A nightcap. And again tomorrow, and the next day and the next.” He sighs, letting Anthony wrap him in his arms.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Good morning,” Matthew grins, hanging in the doorway a moment more to watch him._
> 
> _“Good morning,” answers Anthony. He reaches across himself to tap his cigarette against an ashtray. “It seems my father has died.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta'd by our beloved [Noodle](http://noodletheelephant.tumblr.com/)!

It’s a rare day when Anthony wakes before Matthew. His lectures are always scheduled for afternoons, his tutoring sessions after. Counseling last, wherein he exchanges kisses behind closed doors with his brash American, before they pedal home either apart or together.

It is rarer still that Anthony awakens before Matt on a weekend.

In fact, Matthew can’t remember a time it’s ever happened in their year together.

He spreads his hand along the sheet beside him, gathering what lingering warmth remains of his absent lover. A shift closer brings his nose to Anthony’s pillow, and a deep breath fills him with his professor’s familiar scent. Primrose oil and juniper berries, smoke and sweat. Matthew exhales it all at once and drags his feet from the side of the bed to the floor, shivering as his toes press to winter-cold wood.

He doesn’t bother to put on clothes, at least until he reaches the bedroom door. It’s cold in the old house, between Michaelmas and Lent, and no wonder, with snow shining altogether too bright on the windowsills and blanketing the world beyond. Matthew goes back for a pair of long underwear and his college jumper, a pair of woolen socks mismatched, one of which is too big for him and must belong to Anthony.

He wiggles his toes in it and smiles a little, before taking to the stairs.

The scent of coffee warms him on the way, shivering brisk as he catches the bannister and spins himself into the sitting room. Florid smoke follows as he takes a deep breath and pivots into the kitchen, and there. There. Anthony sits with long legs crossed at the knee and the newspaper folded in his hand. In the other, a cigarette brought between his lips.

“Good morning,” Matthew grins, hanging in the doorway a moment more to watch him.

“Good morning,” answers Anthony. He reaches across himself to tap his cigarette against an ashtray. “It seems my father has died.”

For a moment the words don’t sink in, they don’t seem real. And Matt only realizes he’s moved when his feet take him from the door and to his partner, hands winding sleep-warm around his neck, a soft sigh pressed to his temple in lieu of a kiss.

“I’m sorry,” Matt murmurs. Anthony just hums, brings the cigarette to his lips again to take a drag and almost immediately exhale it. He is entirely tense, almost trembling beneath Matt’s touch.

“I was never overly fond of him.”

“It’s still a loss,” Matthew allows, permission, perhaps, if Anthony will not give it to himself, to grieve. “Did you get a letter?”

“Telegram.”

“What will you do?”

“Wonder how they found me,” he answers. “Wonder why they bothered after so long. I supposed I deluded myself into thinking they’d forgotten me entirely. ‘Surely that Anthony is another, surely our son would never’...”

A swift puff of smoke fills in the words he doesn’t complete. Matthew takes the newspaper from Anthony’s hand and replaces it with himself. Strong thighs straddle the lap that unfolds when Anthony uncrosses his legs, confronted not with the news unread but with the young man who loves him instead.

Their eyes meet for a moment, before Anthony looks away, to stub his cigarette out among the remains of far too many others for so early in the day. Already his breath is warm with the scent of liquor, and Matthew spares a narrow look to the mug beside him. But now isn’t the time for that, and Matthew’s upbringing has made him familiar with the curse and necessity of drink. He folds his fingers together at the back of Anthony’s neck and brings their foreheads to rest together, so they may breathe together, so they may settle, at least like this.

“You didn’t answer my question,” Matt says gently.

Anthony works his lips between his teeth and shakes his head a little, bringing a hand to rest at the small of Matthew’s back. “They want me to go. To ‘see him off’. I should see him off the way that he so graciously did me, with a curse and a kick and spit in his face.”

Matt hums a note, hardly of warning, even less so of displeasure. Anthony has since told him more of his family. Rarely. Usually in the throes of deep poetry, good whiskey and empty cool nights. Matthew knows enough to immediately tense at the mention of his father, on Anthony’s behalf. With a gentle turn of his head he nuzzles against the poet before him, over and over until he can feel his breathing ease and his hands settle softer against Matthew.

“Who sent the telegram?”

“My mother.”

“Did she -”

“Not since the day she let him -” Anthony swallows, opens his eyes to regard Matt’s lips, so close before him. “No.”

Matthew licks his bottom lip into his mouth in thought and then straightens, enough to see Anthony’s face as he works strand by beautiful silvered strand from his face to behind his ears. He traces broad brows with his thumb, touches the pulse at his temples, warms the rims of his ears.

“I’ll come with you,” he says.

Anthony snorts, and immediately regrets the sound. It’s easier to tend to another than one’s self, it always has been. He brings his hand up Matthew’s back and sinks it into his hair, fingers curling soft.

“It would do no one good,” he says.

“It would not do her good,” Matthew clarifies. He warned Anthony, long ago, that he was persistent. The poet sighs beneath the weight of his lover’s conviction. “But it would do you good to have me there. It would do me good to know you’re not alone going into that.”

“You assume I’m going at all, sweet boy.”

“Aren’t you?”

“Why should I?” Anthony asks, blinking up at Matthew in surprise. “Let him be mourned by his simpering wife -”

“Your mother who birthed you.”

“By her and by only those he paid to keep his house. Let him rot knowing that he cast out his son who has created a life without need for his land or money or name. To what end do I owe him anything? What he might have given me, Matthew, he stripped from me.”

“But you have me,” Matthew insists. “Now. You don’t need him, you never did. But if you don’t go -”

“Oh,” laughs Anthony, dire. “Oh, please tell me.”

“You’ll never have another chance to show him, in some way, what you’ve done without him.”

It’s enough to hitch Anthony’s breath. No, it’s enough to stop it entirely, stuck in his throat like bile on a bender ending too soon. He swallows it down, brow creasing, and averts his eyes in favor of leaning against Matthew’s shoulder, rubbing his cheek there to take from his lover what warmth his bitter body will not provide.

“I haven’t been there since,” he finally whispers. “I don’t - I cannot imagine it now. It was someone else’s life, imagined, never meant for me. And if he’s gone, then it’s lost to me anyway, isn’t it?”

Matthew holds Anthony close, a hand in his hair, curled around his head to keep him near. His other hand he strokes against Anthony’s cheek, barely stubbled where he hasn’t shaved it yet this morning. He is suddenly sixteen again, curled in Matt’s arms seeking reassurance and kindness he never got from his family. Matthew kisses his hair.

“You are no longer that boy,” Matt tells him. “You are so much more than that boy. As prideful, as beautiful, as strong, but also accomplished, educated. A survivor, despite their best efforts and worst thoughts. You have overcome them, and outgrown them. They have lost a man so talented and kind, so thoughtful and stubborn,” Matt smiles as Anthony snorts softly against him. “That showing them yourself now will render them dumb.”

Matthew leans back further against the table and watches Anthony as he sits up to look at him again, brow up in a way that suggests he is utterly terrified of the words Matthew says to him; that he cannot hope to believe them, but will, because Matt is the one who voices them, who brings them to light for Anthony alone.

“Be the bigger man, and go,” Matthew tells him. “Show them their pettiness and cruelty is beneath you, and you are worth so much more than their prejudices.”

“You don’t think it might be a little inflammatory,” Anthony says, “to arrive there with you in tow?”

“Tell them I am your student, on exchange. Tell them I am there with you under the auspices of the university, and surely can’t be left unattended. They don’t need to know otherwise.”

“Oh, but they will,” sighs Anthony. Matthew detects an undercurrent of pleasure coiling sinuous through his professor’s voice, but rather than remark on it, he brings their lips together, to steal the spaces between his words and fill them with love instead. “They’ll have us arrested.”

“They can’t do that. I’m an American.”

Anthony grins despite himself.

“You’re always so sure you’re going to prison,” Matt snorts against Anthony’s cheek. “I don’t believe you’re really afraid of it. But you say that instead of allowing yourself to feel guilt.”

“I feel nothing of the sort.”

“You do, whether or not it’s fair or deserved, you do. And you’ll not have another chance after this. They reached out to you, and if you turn away again now, there won’t be another opportunity.”

Anthony lifts his eyes, seeking between Matthew’s own. Slender fingers that smell of smoke and newsprint curl against his cheek and Matt leans into them, rubbing feline and reassuring. They share a gin-and-coffee kiss that beneath tastes far sweeter, and Anthony sighs.

“And they say the working class lacks wisdom,” he says, a jest to weakly shield his own uncertainty. “It’s tomorrow. Will you come with me? I can’t do this -” Anthony swallows, hard, and reaches for his mug, amending. “I can’t do this alone.”

“To the ends of the earth, if I must,” Matt assures him, leaning in to kiss him again, and again, chaste sweet little things, before he reluctantly pushes to stand up. “And I will make you breakfast.”

“I won't eat it.”

“You will eat it and love it,” Matthew corrects him.

“I love you,” Anthony replies.

And so it goes on into a quiet morning. Matt brews more coffee, fresh and ginless; he makes French toast as well, as Hannibal taught him, and he makes sure Anthony eats as much as he does. A bite for a bite.

Anthony never does read the paper.

While Anthony showers and shaves, Matt begins packing for them both. Sweaters and warm cotton, thick socks, long underwear, scarves from their shared obsessive collection of them. Only when he’s done does he realize he’s packed all their things together, and he’s separating them out to their own bags when Anthony emerges, wrapped in a towel.

“I don’t want to go,” he says.

“I know you don’t.”

“I’m not going.”

Matt watches him as he passes by, leaving wet footprints in his wake. Goosebumps prickle Anthony’s skin but he doesn’t seem to notice, nor seek any remedy when he shivers outright. He tosses Anthony’s socks into his bag and stands when his poet starts down the stairs, following after.

“You’re going to catch cold.”

“Good.”

“You’re being dramatic,” Matt tells him, descending the stairs quickly. He catches Anthony’s wrist before he can make it into the kitchen, drawing him away from the temptation that he knows tugs at Anthony stronger now than ever, and pulling his poet against him instead. Anthony hums a note of displeasure, but leans into Matthew’s warm embrace, bending to rest his head on his shoulder.

“I don’t deserve you,” Anthony whispers. “You don’t deserve putting up with me.”

“I deserve a commendation from the bloody King,” Matthew jokes, holding his poet close, stroking his damp hair, rubbing his skin as he begins to shake from cold. Matt pulls back enough to yank his jumper over his head and push it over Anthony's. The wool scratches his skin in a pleasant way and Anthony lifts his eyes to Matt with a pout.

“Do you think me a coward?”

“No.”

“I do.”

“You’re an idiot,” Matt tells him fondly, stroking his wet hair. “I’ve known that for months and love you all the more for it. Wishing I could climb to the roof of Christ Church and proclaim to the quads below that this is my idiot, and all should behold him.”

Anthony grins despite himself, despite the strain that weighs down every fiber of his body, despite the fact he can hardly stay standing beneath the burden of so much finally come to bear. Leaning heavier against his lover, Matthew takes his share of the weight. He keeps Anthony on his feet, when without him, Anthony would simply curl to the floor.

“Poetry,” he teases, a rueful murmur tucked to the curve of Matthew’s neck. “A laureate in my midst.”

“Inspired,” corrects Matthew.

“By an idiot.”

“By _my_ idiot.”

Anthony finds it in himself to raise his arms and loop them loose over Matthew’s delightfully wide shoulders. When the floor gives way beneath him and he’s lifted, he laughs, just a breath but there all the same. With a grunt, Matthew ducks as Anthony lifts his legs, and he carries his lanky poet across his arms with remarkable ease.

“Over the threshold?” Anthony snorts.

“Up the goddamn stairs to get you dressed.”

A hum rises languid from Anthony as he leans against Matthew, amusement narrowing his eyes. “I love it when you swear.”

Matt murmurs something in an accent too thick to decipher and Anthony just presses closer to him. Behind his act of gentle jest and calm, Matt worries, he frets. It has been well over a year since he has seen Anthony in this state. Drinking, refusing to dress, refusing to move. Food is next. Guilt after that.

He watches Anthony dress, reluctantly, and kisses him before taking his turn in the bathroom. He finds Anthony, predictably, in the kitchen when he returns, but there is no sting of alcohol in his coffee, nor on his lips when Matthew kisses him.

“How long is our trip?” he asks, nuzzling.

Anthony tilts his head and rests his cheek against Matthew’s hair, bringing a hand to rest on the arms that surround him from behind. Beside him is the telegram, but no sooner can Matthew read the name _Anthony_ upon it than it is turned over by a quick hand. He doesn’t have long enough to see what last name they used.

He supposes it doesn’t matter if he knows it or not. His Anthony is Anthony Dimmond, and that he is his is all that matters.

“Three hours,” Anthony answers, turning from the kettle to face his lover. He doesn’t meet his eyes, brows knit. A cool palm is laid against his cheek. Three hours to contemplate what it means to be returning there - not home, it isn’t that - after so long. Three hours in which Anthony plans to partake of every bottle in the dining car. Three hours in which Matthew will see him lose his resolve again and again in barreling towards the man whose scars upon his once-son lay so deep that Anthony himself can hardly see the extent of them.

Perhaps if he drinks enough, they’ll throw him off the train. Perhaps they’ll do so literally.

Anthony isn’t opposed to the idea.

“You should stay,” he says, kissing Matthew once, softly. “You have papers to write.”

Matthew blinks, and his brow creases. “It’s vac right now,” he reminds him. “Lenten term hasn’t started yet.” Anthony appears surprised by the information, but attempts to mask it with a hum.

“We could go to Oxford instead, then.”

“We can write them,” Matt agrees. “Visit them on the way home.”

He makes sure to emphasize the word. Home. This is home. The one Anthony built himself, the one he built with Matthew. This is comfort and happiness, this is late nights and early mornings, a large fireplace and a large kitchen. This is poetry and runny eggs on toast. This is love and the joy in it.

“They will be scandalized that we wrote ahead,” Anthony points out.

“Well I can't very well take all your fun away,” Matt tells him, kissing behind his ear and breathing in the warm familiar scent of his lover.

Anthony lets himself be kissed. He lets himself be held. He lets himself be coaxed and reassured because he damn well can’t do it himself, and though guilt snares him slowly that he has by his own weakness forced Matthew to be his strength, he can no more resist the support than he can stand for himself.

Pathetic. He is pathetic.

“Go get the bags,” Anthony tells him. “If we leave now, we’ll arrive just in time to ruin supper, get back on a train, and still have a few hours to sleep when we’re here again.” He draws a breath, and sighs. “When we’re home again.”

“You can do this,” Matt responds, kissing Anthony’s cheek before stepping away to get their things. “We can. And then maybe it will be a little easier.”

Maybe.

Or maybe not.

Anthony watches him go, taking the steps two at a time, and he envies him the energy, seemingly boundless. The top step creaks and Anthony turns, opening the cabinet to produce a bottle of Irish whisky, half-empty. He whispers a curse, takes a breath, and when he puts the bottle back, it’s empty entirely.

Now is hardly the time to start resisting vice.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Have you been drinking?”_
> 
> _“Not nearly enough, it seems.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta'd by our beloved [Noodle](http://noodletheelephant.tumblr.com/)!

Matthew does an admirable job of keeping Anthony far more sober than he intended to be.

Anthony knows what he’s doing. Someone who’s found their calling at the bottom of a bottle can’t help but be aware, regardless of inebriation, of attempts to dissuade. They play cards and they talk. Matthew even tries his hand again at poetry, and Anthony is genuinely pleased enough by this to let himself be distracted. But the pull towards the dining car doesn’t stop and finally when they’ve kissed each other into restfulness, Anthony takes his leave for the facilities and stops by the bar along the way.

He’s still not nearly as drunk as he’d like to be by the time they arrive.

The sun malingers above the horizon when they disembark at the single platform closest to the last place on Earth that Anthony wishes to be. Germany would be better than this. America would be better than this. The fucking Sahara desert would be better than the rolling green hills with their whispering grasses and the copses of trees dotting them like dark-fleeced sheep.

He hates the trees and he hates the hills. He hates the indigo sky and stupid clouds fluffy as cotton across it. He hates the flavor of the air and immediately lights a cigarette to stifle it, as Matthew takes up their bags to seek the car.

“No,” Anthony snarls, as he sees one in particular, waiting with a driver beside it. “We’ll find our own.”

They do, though it takes a while, with so little need for vehicles out in such remote an area. Matthew obliges, willing to ease Anthony’s enormous displeasure, even if it means waiting an hour before they’re finally on the road again.

“I want to go home,” whispers Anthony, digging his heel into the seat and leaning his chest against his lanky leg. Smoke spools thick around him as he refuses to look through the window, or at Matthew, or at anything but the back of the seat in front of him. “I hate that you’ve made me do this. You’ll hate the place as soon as you see it and you’ll regret having come here immediately.”

“I will never regret going anywhere with you,” Matt tells him, though he can feel the coiling of a particular energy he has never felt from Anthony before. It’s angry, and it’s proud, and it’s cold. Anthony has been many things with Matt, at the beginning, in the worst days of his own personal depression and confusion, but he has never been cold.

“We’ll be off home tomorrow evening. Sooner, depending on when the service begins,” Matthew reminds him, settling as small in the car as he can manage, eyes on the views outside the window, allowing himself to take in the beauty of the country that Anthony grew up in. It is lovely here, and he imagines, for a moment, a different fate for his poet. The same hills and rivers, heavenly sunsets and glorious empty space. No hatred to bind him, no anger to burn him.

He reaches to take Anthony’s hand beneath the coat he has piled against it and holds tight when Anthony tries to slip it free.

Anthony allows his hand to be held, and he squeezes back in what dismal comfort he can provide either of them. He does not loathe Matthew’s touch, he couldn’t ever, even when early on he tried so hard to make himself do so. But he’s fraught with disgust toward himself that something so simple, so genuinely affectionate, can after so many years away from this place, once again in this place make him feel wrong. Sinful. A hateful creature spitting in the face of God for something so simple as a love of the male spirit.

Nonsense.

It’s nonsense and Anthony knows it and yet even knowing it to the core of his entire being, he doubts. That doubt was beaten into him with words and prayers; that doubt was beaten into him with fists and booted toes. That doubt was what chilled him more than barren winter when he was cast out and in the silent dark accepted his father’s truth that he was worthless.

Anthony could not help but note that no telegram was sent from the barrister’s office to tend to his late father’s will.

More of note was that Anthony was genuinely surprised by this.

Nonsense.

Of course he wouldn’t have been included.

He manages to make himself breathe again and just in time for it to be crushed from his lungs, a low exhale of displeasure as a house reveals itself over the hill ahead.

“We’re here,” he mutters. “How very grand.”

Matthew leans forward in his seat a little. It is not a house. It is a mansion. Sprawling wide and glorious, two stories tall with glittering windows lining each. Cupolas dot the roof in little peaks as winding bricklaid promenades curl around the property. There is a fountain. There are tended forests surrounding it. Matthew shakes his head in disbelief and tries not to let his awe show through, and he assumes he manages it well when Anthony snorts.

“I told you that you would hate it.”

It looks like a place for grand balls and lavish events. It looks like a place for exquisite dinner parties befitting the royal family. It doesn't look like a place children were raised, or warmth was felt. It is a palace but it is empty. Matthew doesn't hate it, he couldn't, but he can feel the exhaustion and despair that Anthony would have had to grow up with.

Restrictions, traditions, narrow-minded ignorance. 

“It looks unreal,” Matt manages, the only honest thing he can say without igniting a wrath in Anthony one way or the other before they get to the house.

Like a patch of warm sun on a winter’s day, Matthew’s gentle words shake the chill from Anthony. Not entirely, only a crack across the frost, but enough that he breathes, softly; that he smiles, just a little. There is regret still but of a new form, vining green and tightening his fingers where they clasp together. For nearly four hours, Anthony has paced like a caged animal, has sought out drink, has patronized and disregarded the kindness and care shown to him. And even then, even when Anthony snarled and growled, Matthew took his hand and held it. Even when Anthony defied him and took to drink, Matthew kissed his brow and told him he loved him.

Matt warned Anthony long ago that he was unrelenting in his persistence.

Anthony wonders now if he should have warned Matthew in return that he is equally unrelenting, but in selfishness.

As gravel crunches beneath the wheels of the car, Anthony ducks his head and lifts Matthew’s hand. He brushes his lips across his knuckles and holds them there, sharing warmth between them in what few minutes are left for them to do so. Matt's fingers spread; Anthony seeks them out with parted lips from knuckle to nail and finally sighs, eyes closed to the sight of the house looming above when the car comes to a stop. If the driver notices them, he pays no mind. The folded bills that Anthony passes forward to him ensure that his thoughts remain at ease, and the car idles loud.

Anthony squeezes Matthew's fingers against his mouth for a moment more, and sighs.

"I love you," Anthony whispers, because there's nothing he needs Matt to know more than that. He won't promise that he will be kinder here; he doesn't know if he can be. He won't promise that he'll be all right; he doesn't know that either. But he knows that he loves him, and he hopes that it's enough to make up for all the rest. "I love you so very much."

Matt smiles, cheeks pink and eyes soft, and tilts his head. He says the words back, he squeezes Anthony’s hand a second more. They will find ways, in that huge and looming house, to touch and kiss again. Matt strokes just once against Anthony’s thigh and then moves to get out of the car.

The wind is kept at bay by hills nearby, and there is a tingle in the air of just the threat of it. Matt rubs his arms and waits for the driver to go to the trunk to retrieve their bags. He has no idea what to expect. Already his mind conjures images of beautiful poised figures who look like Anthony, of an elaborate artistic room filled still with pages and pages of scribbled out words.

He takes his bag and makes a conscious effort to ignore Anthony’s. And then he waits to be led inside, watching with curiosity and a strange childish delight as a butler opens the door and stands beside it watching the landscape beyond - not them.

Anthony hefts his bag, artfully packed rather than overstuffed as he might have done himself, and looks up when Matthew is addressed.

“You may bring his bags to the third room on the left, up the center stairs.”

“No,” Anthony exclaims, before Matt’s lips have even parted in surprise. “No, Frank. He’s not a porter, he’s a guest.”

A subtle inclination of Frank’s head is enough, and he reaches to take the luggage from them instead. Frank is an older man, thinning grey hair and deep lines carved into his face, he lets his gaze linger on Anthony where it simply skimmed by Matthew. Anthony doesn't let his bag be taken as he ascends the stairs, lifting a hand to dissuade Frank from carrying it for him. He stops before him instead, fingers stretching, curling closed, and Anthony is grasped into an embrace that splits the keen control the butler held moments before.

Anthony's breath leaves him in a whisper, and he returns the firm squeeze, an arm around the older man's shoulders.

"Hello, Frank," he murmurs, a smile in his eyes even when it hardly tilts his mouth.

"It has been a very long time," the man answers him. It's almost an apology for the show of affection, and when they part he dusts his hands down his uniform to align it neatly again. "I'm glad that you came."

"There's one, then," Anthony allows. "I didn't expect that she would send -"

"She didn't. I did."

Anthony holds his breath an instant too long, a faint crease in his brow and a tangle of emotions too sudden and snarled for any single one to outweigh the other. He clears his throat and manages a smile. "Frank, this is -" My student? My lover? All entirely appropriate and entirely wrong all at once. "Matthew. Matthew, Frank, who keeps this monstrosity from appearing anything but."

Matthew steps closer and holds out his hand for the man to take. Frank appears entirely indifferent when he takes it, but Matthew can see the way his eyes narrow just a little in a smile.

“It is good to meet you, sir.”

“In unfortunate circumstances,” Matthew says, stepping back to stand beside Anthony again.

“Yes,” Frank drags the word out into something almost akin to a sneer, eyes seeking past the two of them to look over the fields beyond. “Quite.” A moment more of contemplation and Frank gestures for them to go inside, taking Matthew’s bag to carry for him even when the young man insists he can do it himself.

“Perhaps you would like your old room?” Frank asks, and Anthony’s brows crease further. “Or the rooms that face the east garden? They are near, should you and your friend wish to keep company once the rest of the household has taken to bed.”

Anthony's breath burns in his lungs as he steps inside, unable for several strides more to exhale at all. He lifts his eyes to the painted ceiling high overhead, made to resemble the same bright sky as on a day like today, clear chandelier in the center. His lips twist together as his gaze follows the curving stairs, the echo of his pounding feet upon them until he tumbled down the last few and lay sprawled and snarling against marble floor. The vase that was broken in the altercation has not be replaced, but its pedestal is now surrounded by flowers sent as bereavement gifts.

"Are those the rooms -"

"Yes," Frank answers. "I'm afraid you'll have to share a bathroom," he adds as an aside to Matthew. "I can show you where you'll be staying, if you'd like to come with me."

Matthew hesitates, a beat, and Anthony lifts his hand. "Go with him." His tongues presses past his lips and a shadow creases his brow. "Is she here?"

"Taking guests in the parlor until supper."

"Perhaps I'll wander then. It would be untoward for her to react in front of guests who come expecting restrained and dignified mourning."

Matthew gives Anthony a look, a gently arched brow and the other gestures with his chin up the stairs for Matthew to go. He does, following Frank who inquires softly if Matthew would like to know more of the house while Anthony is occupied, and Matt replies that he would, absolutely. Matt watches Anthony until the stairs curl enough that he cannot see him anymore, and then he turns, attentive, to Frank.

The history of the house is dictated to him through practice and apparent endless repetition, but it is hardly boring. It is clear how close Frank is to this house, how many of Anthony’s family members he had seen pass through its halls. As much as it is educational, it is also entirely revealing. The house had served, for a time, as a stopover hospital for the soldiers during the Great War, the lower floors all taken up with beds and gurneys and boxed equipment.

“It is only in recent years,” Frank says, “that we have been able to restore the house to its former finery. The house that Anthony remembers.”

Matt swallows but decides to say nothing for the moment. Frank stops outside a large door and turns the ornate handle to open it. Within, a heavy four poster with a chest at the foot of it, a desk, a winged armchair by the window overlooking the vast gardens below.

“I’m afraid you will be sharing a bathroom with Anthony,” Frank says, setting Matt’s bags to the chest. “Just through there. If there is anything in particular you require that the bathroom does not have, please find me and I will do my best to accommodate.”

“Thank you,” Matthew smiles, he can’t help but to, Frank is the epitome, in the most beautiful and stereotypical sense, of an English butler. He is well-presented and well-spoken, polite and crisp in his diction despite the underlying thrum of the working class. He is a man for whom this is his entire life, this house, this family within it, this world that is slowly, slowly, growing extinct as modernity takes its place. Frank nods and turns to go, asking if there would be anything else Matthew needed, and Matt stops him.

“If you’ve the time -”

“Until supper, sir, I have the time.”

“Please, just Matthew is fine. Matt, if you like. I… how long have you known Anthony?”

Frank folds his hands together at his back, and releases a brisk sigh. "Nearly thirty-three years, unless my math or memory's begun to go."

"His whole life?" Matt asks, smile widening.

"I was brought on not long after he was born, to help keep the staff organized. It was quite an event for a place as quiet as this to suddenly have a noisy boy like Anthony within it. I daresay it's never been the same since."

Matt's lips part and he laughs, just a note, before quickly training his expression to something more composed. "I understand that he - he hasn't been here in a long time."

Frank's brow twitches higher, the barest movement, but on him it speaks volumes. "An unfortunate falling out, for an even more unfortunate reason, and worsened by hereditary stubbornness. I'm sure he's told you a great deal more than you wish to let on. I'm just as sure there's a great deal more that's not been said."

"I'm only his student," Matthew says, carefully, as Frank shakes his head.

"Sir - Matthew. May I speak freely?"

"I wish you would."

"You needn't tread so lightly here, at least with me," he says, gently. "I am aware of Anthony's predisposition and that of the company he keeps. My brother, rest his soul, possessed a similarly bent inclination. And, speaking freely, it’s my belief that were we to go cutting off our families for something so inconsequential as that, I daresay there wouldn't be a family in England left whole."

Matt laughs, despite himself, and there is a twitch of Frank’s lips that show he is doing everything in his stiff-upper-lip power not to laugh also. It’s suddenly easier to imagine Anthony here, if he had Frank as his caregiver. And he hardly doubts that Anthony’s parents happily left the raising of their son to the staff. It’s deplorable, but it would have been worse had they held a bigger hand in it.

“You loved him," Matt says.

“I still do. He’s a frightfully determined young man, he always has been. Set in his ways and willing to fight for what he believed to be right. It’s something to be respected, though his father, rest his soul, never saw fit to look past his own ignorance on the matter.”

“Were they similar?”

“In appearance? No, Anthony resembles his mother. In manner, very much so. Perhaps that was the reason for their conflict, neither wanted to step down from an argument when there was a potential for one to grow.”

“He’s still the same now,” Matt replies, watching Frank’s shoulders gently relax. He hadn’t wanted to ask, but Matthew knows he wishes to know how the man he raised, whom he watched exiled from his own home, had fared all these years. “Still as argumentative and clever. His classes are filled with curious students, there has rarely been an empty seat.”

“You take your papers with him?” Frank asks, though he does so in a low voice, as if apologetic for prying.

“No,” Matt grins. “I’m taking medicine, but I sit in on his lectures whenever I can.”

“For how long, if I may ask?”

Matt draws a breath, and then another when he hears the question truly being asked. “A year and some months,” he answers. “Nearly a year and a half, I think.”

There is some discomfort as Frank nods, raised in a different time where these things must have been more repressed than they are even now, Matthew imagines. But Matt is touched, sudden heat spreading in his chest, that even with Frank’s conservative upbringing, this man accepts. Acknowledges. And Matthew feels more welcomed here than he could have possibly conceived.

“I won’t speak ill of the dead,” Frank says, reserved. “But I sent for Anthony in hopes of making amends for being unable to intervene in what occurred. It was unnecessary, in every sense of the word - the fight, what came after, and my own inaction -”

Matt lifts a hand in a gentle movement, and lowers it slowly. “You don’t need to apologize,” Matthew says.

“Not to you, perhaps,” he allows, with a faint smile and a gracious nod. “I admire your bravery in coming here. It can’t have been an easy journey. I can only begin to imagine the state he’s been in.”

Matt nods and then immediately straightens. He had wondered why Anthony so casually sent him away with Frank. He had wondered if perhaps he needed time to breathe within the house again. He had wondered.

“He will drink,” Matt tells Frank softly. “When he’s upset he… he hides in there. I will do my best to keep him sober but I doubt even I’ll be able.”

“Anthony has a right to his anger,” Frank allows. “And he has never taken grief well. And he will grieve, though he may not understand why. Perhaps not for his father, but for the home this once was.”

There is a moment between them where they stand quiet, just sharing the room, then Frank straightens his shoulders and with a gentle incline of his head excuses himself to check on the preparations for supper. Matthew thanks him, watches him go, and then makes his way from his room to the corridor beyond. He can hear voices - a calm hum of them, like in a church - down below, in the parlor, perhaps, or elsewhere, and he follows them with quiet steps to the large staircase and descends.

Matthew could smile for the fact that his feet carry him to Anthony, always, as if he’s the bright star that guides him north, no matter where he is in relation. To choosing that particular book from the library cart, traveling alone across the Atlantic to England, interviewing for Cambridge to study - not only to row - in hopes of even seeing him, let alone…

Let alone.

He could smile for it, and he does a little, but he could smile more if he wasn’t keenly familiar with the particular spread of Anthony’s legs where he sits, on a little bench outside what must be the parlor. He knows the lazy drape of Anthony’s hands against his thighs, the slump in his shoulders. He isn’t entirely drunk, but he’s on his way.

Matthew’s heart still tangles in his throat when Anthony turns a smile to him, a shadow of its usual brightness, but there all the same.

“You should see the gardens,” Anthony suggests. “I’ve to wait for whomever’s in there to leave before -”

He cuts his words short as the door opens, and forces himself to sit a little straighter. Two women clad in formal mourning black pass by him with little notice. Anthony snorts. They don’t know him. Why should they? If they’d ever met him it was half a lifetime ago, and he hadn’t existed since. He watches them go with a tension that spreads his fingers and curls them against his trousers, pushing to stand with a shocking sobriety.

More effective than a cold bath.

Matt grabs his hand, standing closer to mask it from anyone turning back to look, and squeezes it.

“Should I -”

“Please,” Anthony breathes, and his fingers tremble with how hard he clasps Matthew’s hand before he lets it go. And then he goes, chin high and stride long, into the parlour with Matthew following quietly behind. 

The room is, in a word, overwhelming. Gold filigree atop intricate patterns of wallpaper, muted enough to not appear pretentious, yet somehow still heavy, as though the entire room is wont to collapse should anyone come to near it to touch. The ceiling is high, as in the entrance, and another chandelier hangs low over the dark sofas and heavy chairs. There are flowers on every surface, heavy lilies with their intoxicating scent, mingling with lavender and roses, buckets upon buckets of baby’s breath and chrysanthemums. 

In one of the heavy chairs sits a woman, beautiful, in her dark mourning dress and short veil. She is elegant and poised, lovely even with the blotches of pink on her otherwise pale cheeks, the only evidence of her grief where the rest of her appears perfect.

She looks up as they enter and her eyes widen a bit before they narrow sharp, lips thinning with a subtle displeasure. Anthony does, as Frank suggested, resemble his mother. But he does not have her eyes. Her eyes are dark as aged ale, deep as the woods. Matthew stops when Anthony does, and says nothing to the widow - though it would hardly matter, she hasn’t moved her gaze from her son since they both entered.

“Mother,” Anthony says, and the word holds more weight, more disgust and hurt than should ever be held by those syllables on any child’s lips.

She tilts her head, controlled and reserved and entirely precise in affecting an angle of confusion, as if she doesn’t understand the word that’s been said to her. She holds it long enough that Matthew’s heart feels as if it’s going to pop from its moorings, clipped free from tension alone, and then she turns a gloved hand. Anthony returns the gesture with a nod, practiced, and his gaze passes over Matthew as he turns to take a seat on the couch not beside her, but facing.

“I must admit surprise in seeing you here,” she says, and in the elegant lilt of her words, Matthew hears Anthony at lecture, precise and clear as polished crystal.

Matthew sits beside him, but not near. There is room enough on the plush pink velveteen for another to fit comfortably between.

“You sent for me,” Anthony reminds her.

Behind the veil, her lips part for an instant before pulling into a thin smile. “That is in fact the reason for my surprise, Anthony. I’ve done no such thing.”

Anthony’s surprise is restrained to a single furrow in his brow. “Then who -”

“Have you been drinking?” She inquires.

“Not nearly enough, it seems.”

“Charming.”

“I've learned from the best,” Anthony answers, as he pulls himself to stand, forcing steadiness even as the tawdry room spins around him. “I would say it was a pleasure to see you but it hasn’t been, and I’ve no reason to lie to a stranger.”

“Will you not introduce the young man who joined us?” She asks him, tone just the same as it had been throughout. “Have you forgotten your manners since you’ve insisted on finding your way? It’s a pity, you were a very well-presented boy, before -”

“Before I started getting buggered up the ass, mother?”

There is a silence so heavy that Matthew can barely breathe, can barely move, though he wants nothing more than to turn and look at Anthony, wide-eyed. After a moment, Anthony breaks the spell with a hum and turns his hand over to regard his nails.

“This is Matthew Brown, he is a student of mine at Cambridge. He’s interested in analyzing the decline of eighteenth-century architecture with regard to modern customs being adopted throughout the cities and estates. I felt it would be an education for him to come and see a ruin.”

Her hand holds in the air a beat too long, and Anthony’s smile widens just as sinuous as her own had moments before. She lowers it, fingers tightening and relaxing again, to the arm of her chair, and makes no further move.

“You may leave,” she says. “You are not -”

“Welcome here? I’ve never been,” Anthony shrugs. He aches a mirthless note of laughter, tangled in a sigh, and lets his own hands fall to his sides. “I’m not going until I’ve seen him off.”

“You’ve no right.”

“His only son - like it or not - has every right. By the time you take it your concern to a barrister, he’ll be buried and it won’t matter. And truly, what’s your word against mine? A bitter widow against his heir.”

“Anthony,” whispers Matthew, and the look he receives from both mother and son is enough to make him swallow his words, his breath, and nearly his tongue.

“Will I see you for supper?” Anthony asks her.

“No.”

“Breakfast, then, before the wake,” he says, as he turns toward the door, without stopping “I hope we don’t keep you up, you do need whatever beauty sleep you can still cling to.”

He goes. She lets him. Matthew stands still for a moment longer, dumbfounded and breathless, before he turns to the woman staring coldly after her son.

“I’m sorry for your loss, ma’am,” he offers. It’s little, it’s meaningless, but it’s kinder than the words her son had tossed over his shoulder. He looks after him again, sees the back of his jacket catch the breeze his momentum creates as he takes hold of the banister and swings himself up onto the staircase to ascend.

On a breath, she expresses a word - two words, only - of thanks, and Matthew ducks his head again before he turns to go. His attempt to quietly close the door is stopped by the hands of a young woman, all dark eyes and thick russet curls, who tilts her head toward the stairs. Matthew nods and goes, following the thump of footsteps he can hear spiralling upward.

He wonders at the speed with which word spreads in places like this, cut-off and isolated, an enclave of civility unto itself with all its formality and elegance and whispers and secrets. Halfway up the stairs, the thuds above him stop, and his poet leans across the bannister to regard him.

“Gin, Matthew.”

And Anthony turns to go again.

Matt sighs, letting his eyes close slowly as he hears a door open and loudly slam shut again. He swallows, sets his hand to the banister and continues up the stairs slowly. His own door he opens quietly and shuts just as softly behind himself. He can hear the water running in the bathroom behind the closed door in his room and turns to lock his own before moving to open the other.

Anthony is smoking, quick heavy puffs by the small open window. He doesn’t even react when Matt comes closer, doesn’t start, doesn’t turn, doesn’t do anything but hold his breath a moment when Matt’s hands settle to his shoulders to squeeze.

“You didn’t bring the gin.”

“I’ve no idea where to get it,” Matthew admits softly, and smiles. The excuse is enough to have Anthony hum amusement. For a few hours still, perhaps, he can keep him from the bottle.

“You simply don’t want to watch me drink myself to drowning in the tub,” Anthony responds, morose. And even considering how closely this black humor borders to truth, Matthew yields him a weak breath of laughter.

“You’re right,” he says. “I don’t.”

“Shame,” Anthony relents, ash falling from his cigarette to the floor as he bends a knee against the bath to test the water’s warmth. “It would be a beautiful irony. The son who dies the day before his father’s funeral. With my luck they’d probably bury me next to him. Or she’d have me tossed in the bin, which would be a waste of a lovely corpse.”

Matt watches him a moment before sighing and stepping back to pull his shirt over his head.

“For God's sake,” he murmurs, tossing his shirt and regarding Anthony with lifted brows when he turns to him, confused. “You are so dramatic, is there any moment in your life that isn’t a symphonic exeunt from a Shakespearean tragedy?” He watches Anthony blink, eyes wide, he watches some ash from the cigarette fall silent to the floor again, unheeded and unnoticed.

“Matthew -”

“You would really show him if you drowned in the bathtub,” Matt says, pursing his lips and nodding, as though talking to a child. “God, he’d hate himself then.”

Perhaps it is the eye of the storm, perhaps the storm has passed, but for a moment Anthony’s anger holds. The smoke from his cigarette coils upward in lazy strands of grey, and he regards Matthew, briefly stunned. Matthew doesn’t tell him that he sees his mother in his movements when with practiced control, Anthony finally brings the filter to his lips again.

“I would feel better,” Anthony suggests, though in seeing the wideness of his eyes, Matthew doesn’t buy it for an instant.

He presses anyway.

“You wouldn’t feel anything,” he says. “You wouldn’t feel the agony of working through a tricky line or the joy of finding the right word for it. You wouldn’t feel the pleasure of tutoring when a student finally has their breakthrough. You wouldn’t feel champagne bubbles on your tongue or French whispered against Hannibal’s mouth or me. You wouldn’t feel me, telling you I love you against every inch of your skin, ever again.”

Anthony deflates, a sudden breath enough that smoke clouds thick between them. The elegant fingers that hold his cigarette aloft tremble, until he turns to flick it from the window. Matthew presses a hand to the small of his back, fingers twisting to free his shirt from his trousers, and Anthony shivers so hard he makes a sound.

“Do you feel better now?” he asks. “Now that you’ve told her all the things you’ve kept inside you?”

A hard swallow clicks in Anthony’s throat and he sets his jaw, keeping his body turned from Matthew, his eyes toward the window as they well, swiftly as a summer storm. “No,” he whispers.

“Do you know why?” Matthew asks him softly, bending to turn the water off, just drips into the tub from the tap until it finally closes. When he turns back, Anthony’s shoulders are trembling and he is resting one elbow against his wrist as though he’s still holding the cigarette. He doesn’t turn from the window and Matt steps closer to wrap his arms around Anthony’s middle, ignoring the helpless whine his poet makes at the feeling.

“Because you have long ago shown them that without them you are stronger,” Matt whispers, pressing between Anthony’s shoulder blades, breathing the words hot against his skin through his shirt. “You have long ago shown yourself how strong, and beautiful, and capable you are. Without them you found your real family, without them you kept them together and protected them. Without them you have risen in the ranks of the university to be a professor. Without them you have not become the failure they promised you that you would be.”

Anthony’s fingers slip together, tips to thumb again and again, a nervous gesture rarely seen and usually hidden beneath the anxious flick of a cigarette or the twist of a bottle top. But the hand wrapped against his elbow loosens, and he curls it firm around Matthew’s own, pressed to his belly. The squeeze is tight enough to be nearly painful but Matthew lets him hold. He sighs heat against Anthony’s back.

He loves him.

And he tries to make him feel it in every beat of his heart.

He turns his head as Matthew smiles against his poet’s shoulder, rubbing his cheek there in little turns. “I hate them, Matthew. I hate them because they will never see what you see. I hate them because they make me doubt what you know.”

“Like the critics who miss the point entirely of your poems, because they’re too blinkered to see the reality of the world around them,” Matthew answers. “Like the other authors who are jealous of the success you’ve found in your freedom.”

Anthony snorts, but when Matthew squeezes his waist, he turns and rests his back against the window. His lips hold still beneath the kiss that Matt presses to them, but after a few moments, they part to allow his love to warm him. Slender, smoke-scented fingers curl through his hair and grasp his cheek, and Anthony rests their brows together, his eyes closed.

“Think of all the things you’d not have done had they kept you here,” Matthew tells him. “Think of all the people you’d not have met had you stayed.”

It’s enough to tighten Anthony’s fingers and kick his heart against his ribs. He inhales as a drowning man might, breaching the water’s surface. The truth of Matthew’s words is painful.

The truth often is.

“Who gave you the right,” Anthony whispers, “to speak such wisdom.”

Matthew kisses him, a chaste thing, and strokes his cheek lightly, over and over.

“You did,” he murmurs, "when you let me love you.”


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Matthew has given him his time. His attention. His youth. His energy and his broad shoulders upon which Anthony has draped himself, cumbersome and dour. Whether Matthew comes to regret spending his young and ideal years this way cannot yet be known._
> 
> _But Anthony can at least endeavor to ease the burden._
> 
> _And yet for all of that maudlin thinking, this is not a debt that Anthony is paying, agreeing to go with Matthew. It is - as he said - an honor, to be wanted, included, invited, desired. It is a wonder to think that perhaps, even keeping the nature of their affection at polite distance, Matthew wishes Anthony to be a part of the family he so clearly loves._
> 
> _What could be a greater pleasure than that?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta'd by our beloved [Noodle](http://noodletheelephant.tumblr.com/)!

Anthony shakes. He shakes as Matt steps closer, he shakes as he is undressed and the bath steams beside them. Matthew talks to him, whispering soft things and kind things, true things and loving things.

Matthew gets into the bath first, coaxing Anthony in after him. The water laps against the edge of the bath as the poet slips to press chest to chest with his student, his lover, his other half. Matthew wets Anthony’s hair with gentle strokes through it, cupping water to slip over the strands and down his back.

Slowly, Anthony begins to relax. Slowly, he brings his hands up to slip over the edge of the tub, spilling water to the floor that soaks into the thick bath mat. He groans, nuzzling against Matthew’s neck, and Matt draws his knees up around Anthony to hold him close.

“I love you,” Matt murmurs, kissing Anthony’s temple.

“How foolish of you,” snorts Anthony, but not without the hint of a smile, teasing gently. He splays his fingertips down Matthew’s hairless chest, following the bend of his bicep, around in a spiral until the dark nub of his nipple stiffens. Beneath, Matt’s heart beats steady and serene, not speeding and erratic as Anthony’s has been for the last day, exhausting in its uncertainty. “I could not do this without you, you know. I’d not have bothered. Living is apparently beyond my capabilities to perform effectively.”

Matthew knows the truth of it, though he tells his poet to shut up anyway. Anthony does, but only after he whispers that he loves Matt, too.

Soft lips trace the graceful arch of Matthew’s throat. Anthony lays heavy against him, head on his shoulder, and fingers exploring with glistening trails left in their wake. The soap is pressed against Anthony’s back to scrub him softly free of the sweat and liquor and alarm that clings to his skin, and he stretches long and pleased beneath Matthew’s touch.

“You spoke with Frank,” Anthony notes, and Matthew nods, cupping another handful of water to pour down Anthony’s skin. “I wrote to him, you know. During the war. Twice only since they threw me out, to let him know that I was going and to tell him that I’d returned. I feared the letters would be intercepted and that my father would treat Frank as the guilty party. He’s a good man. He’s always been. Like a brother and a real father to me both at times. A winking conspirator at others. I’m sure he had plenty to tell you.”

Matthew sucks his bottom lip between his teeth and holds it there with a smile. He recalls the great marble fountain out front, dolphins and sea creatures and nymphs all in a maelstrom of movement. And with equal parts intuition and lucky guess, Matt grins, “About the fountain.”

“Oh dear,” mutters Anthony, turning slowly to his back to lay half-atop and half-beside Matthew. He drapes an arm across his brow and smiles from beneath. “I shouldn’t have been faulted for that. My thought processes were entirely sensible. If I am bare in the bath, and I am bare in the sea, what difference is it where the water is, and why shouldn’t I be bare in that, too? She’s to blame, really.”

“Oh?”

“Mm. How was I to know she’d invited the vicar by for tea?” Anthony grins as Matt laughs, eyes widening. “More to the point,” Anthony continues, “how was I to know he’d steal a look at me when I slid out to greet him?”

“You are terrible.”

“I can't deny that, my darling, I was a menace.” Anthony stretches in the hot water and presses back against Matt fully, back to chest, drawing his knees up to be framed by his boy’s.

Matt holds him close, adjusting to sit comfortably in the deep copper tub. After a moment he reaches, dragging close Anthony’s shirt and taking a cigarette from the emptying pack within. He lights up, takes a deep drag, and passes it to Anthony on elegant stretched fingers.

“I can imagine you here,” Matt tells him. “Pretending it was your castle and you the prince within it.”

Anthony allows a smile at this, distant memories suddenly revived by the familiar scent of lilacs through the open window and the sound of wind as it whistles relentless over nearby moors. He holds the cigarette between his lips and spreads his other hand across the edge of the bath, laying heavy back against Matt as he wraps his arms around Anthony's waist.

"I was," he allows. "For a time, I was. The last hope of a faltering family name, treated with all the expectation and allowance that comes accordingly. Responsibility and indulgence in equal parts, the latter only because the weight of the former was so severe. Fate has a rather bleak sense of humor, I suppose."

"Were you happy here?" Matthew asks, and Anthony shrugs a little.

"I never knew hunger. I never knew labor. I saw other boys my age at work in their family's fields tending sheep and felt relief in the knowledge that such a life would never be my own."

"You didn't answer the question."

Anthony takes another long drag, crackling embers and ashing over the side of the bath. "Yes," he finally says. "I suppose so."

Matt runs his hands over Anthony’s chest, to touch, to ease, occasionally circling a nipple to tease, but not to start anything. Anthony has wanted none of that here, and Matthew is content to simply remain close, as close as they can, while they have to remain in this house that haunts Anthony more than it pleases him.

“God, I envy you the space,” Matt murmurs, smiling. He takes the cigarette as it’s passed back to him and nuzzles into the palm that holds his cheek, over and over. “Five siblings to contend with for limited space and limited attention.”

“I always wanted siblings.”

“No you don’t,” Matt laughs, dropping his head back to exhale a plume of silver smoke towards the ceiling. He watches it dissipate and twist in the breeze from the window. “Five sisters are a bit of a handful.”

Anthony's grin spreads wide, genuine delight drawing up his eyes as he tilts his head to watch Matthew smoke. "All girls?"

"And me. Don't," Matt says, as Anthony draws a breath but laughs it out again. "Don't say it."

Yielding, hands up, Anthony settles again with a nuzzle beneath Matthew's chin. "And you in the middle."

"The older two would punch me in the arm if I didn't behave politely during the younger two's tea. Twins, the youngest. They're the ones who'd put -"

Slowly, Anthony's brow creeps upward.

"Who'd put makeup on me," Matthew sighs, and for a moment there is little more sound than the wind across the moors and the soft noises of the tap dripping. Until Anthony laughs, anyway, hand against his mouth doing little to stifle his genuine joy in this. In Matthew. In every moment they share together.

"You never asked how I got so good at serving tea," Matthew points out. Anthony loses himself entirely, slipping into the tub, nearly immersed as he holds his aching sides.

"I'm going to drown. I'm going to laugh so hard I faint and then drown."

"Sure," answers Matt, eyes narrowed in amusement. "Because I'm not going to rescue you."

"That is wonderful," the poet declares. "They must adore you."

“Lord, I miss them,” Matt sighs, taking another long drag of the cigarette and ashing it before passing the rest to Anthony. It is good for another two or three pulls before it can be discarded and they both savor the ebb and flow of smoke in the little bathroom. “They raised me as much as I raised them. Our parents worked too much. But let me tell you, sharing a room with two girls…”

He laughs, easy and young, a sound that turns into a giggle fairly quickly.

“Beth would cover for me, every time. As much of a troublemaker as I was, it makes sense that we were just a year apart in age,” Matthew sighs and kisses Anthony’s hair before nuzzling it. He answers the unasked question in quiet murmurs. “Mary, she’s six years my senior. Annabelle would be twenty-four now. Then me. Beth. Ester and Ellie will be twelve in September.”

Anthony listens. He pays attention, he remembers and repeats to himself their names and the order of their birth. It feels important to do so. For a moment, he even allows the passing thought of their being a distant family to him, by way of the boy who left so much behind to find him. Anthony takes a final drag and dips the cigarette into the bath to kill the embers, before dropping it carelessly to the floor.

"I'm sorry," Anthony says. Matthew's brows lift a little.

"Why?"

"That you've not been to see them. That I hadn't even imagined you would want to. That I hadn't even bloody asked. You should," he says, "after Lent term. You should go see them over the long vac, they must miss you as much as you miss them."

Matt hums, wrapping his arms and slowly his legs around Anthony before ducking his head to kiss his shoulder.

“It isn’t that simple,” he murmurs.

“There is time.”

“Time aplenty,” Matt agrees. “But no money to pay for the ticket. You remember I’m attending Cambridge on a full scholarship. I don’t have the means to go back.”

It is, in truth, the only reason he has not been. He has written, often, to all of them, and his mother and father. Pages upon pages of letters, recalling the playful moments for the twins, stories of his accidental misdeeds for Annabelle and Mary, detailed accounts of his classes and races for his father and mother. He had only ever written about Anthony to Beth, and even then, in code, in case one of the younger girls got hold of their correspondence.

Anthony twists comfortably with a slosh of water, looping his arms back around Matthew's neck. He tilts his head and bares his neck to the kisses that trail upward, and a gentle laugh infuses his breath.

"So you do have limits then," he says.

"I'd say the same as every student but we both know that's far from true."

"Not financially," Anthony responds. "To your wisdom. Darling, go and see them. Let me know how much the fare will be -"

Matthew's kisses still and he holds his breath, lips just above his poet's pulse. "Anthony, no. I can't ask for that."

"And you haven't. I wouldn't dream of having to be asked. How very gauche that would be."

“I can’t,” Matthew breathes, but his eyes are wide with wonder and hope, childish hope for a possibility of seeing his family again in Baltimore, in the tiny world where he grew up. He shakes his head but his smile grows and he wraps his arms tighter around the other man and just holds him.

Two years since he has seen his family, and years more, he had imagined, not seeing them until he graduated and could come home proud as an educated man. He holds Anthony tighter.

“Would you come with me?” he asks. “We have nowhere to accommodate you, but we could find rooms nearby… the neighbourhood isn’t the best, it’s far from affluent, it’s a little dangerous but we could find places in the city, commute in together -”

Anthony quiets the flurry of words with a kiss, leaning up to meet his lover's lips and hold them still beneath his own. The soft sound that Matthew makes tugs at every part of Anthony, from his own voice returning the noise to his heart that flutters fast to his stirring cock. It's fitting, really, that Matthew can affect his body so entirely.

He moves all of him, entirely, with no more than that simple sound.

"I've never been to America," Anthony murmurs, when their kiss relaxes and parts. "I've never had reason enough to go, and even when reason was offered to me, it was far more a delight to insult by declining. Fitzgerald's yet to forgive me for it," he grins, brash.

"And now?" Matthew asks.

"Do not mistake my concern for lack of desire, but would it not distress your family? I live to shame mine, it seems, but you love yours still. I would not wish to be a burden, in explaining my presence, nor in taking your time from them," he says.

Matt holds him closer again, slipping further down the tub and sloshing more water over the edge. He considers. In truth, he would rather his family not know of this. They are caring and smart, but hardly in a place to accept something so deviant, especially with their faith. Beth would understand, she always has. The twins, young as they are, would allow for it. His older sisters would frown upon it but would hardly stop him. But his father… 

“Come as my professor,” Matt says. “As my tutor and mentor. Come saying you are researching American literature for a new paper for the year. Come saying you wished to inspire yourself by visiting the colonies. Just come. Come with me, please.”

Anthony considers the easy lies, made so by the truth in them. He considers the time away from his house and college; the time away from England entirely, which he hasn't left since the war ended. Most of all, he considers the beautiful young man who gives him so much and asks so very little in return.

"Mr. Brown," he finally sighs, spilling water as he turns to pull his long legs up over Matthew's hips, nestling astride him and framing Matthew's cheeks with his palms. "I expect you to spend as much time with them as possible, and think of me only as a distant, secondary company."

Matthew's eyes widen, but he nods.

"I expect you to forgive me, in advance, for the seasickness that will no doubt render me somewhat less available to make love to you across the entire Atlantic."

Matthew's grin grows and he nods again.

"And I expect you to kiss me, now, immediately, when I tell you that it would be an honor to accompany you to your dreadful rebel colony."

Matthew kisses him. Hands framing his face and smile so wide he can barely keep their lips together, he kisses him. His heart beats too quickly, his breath comes too fast, and he feels as though tears will spill down his cheeks no matter how he tries to hold them back. He had never imagined this. Never this much, never this far. He had kept his thoughts to the minimum of hope, he had told himself to expect perhaps a conversation, perhaps a dinner, perhaps, at most, a night of sweaty pleasure together.

He had never allowed himself to imagine a life together. He had never allowed himself to imagine happiness together. He had never allowed himself to imagine that he would see Anthony’s home or Anthony his, and yet here they are.

He makes a soft sound, like a sob, and wraps his arms around Anthony to hold him closer.

Anthony hushes him, as he embraces Matthew with long arms curled above his shoulders. He whispers warmth in wordless sighs against his hair; he accepts with so much love that he aches as Matthew’s tears spill hot against his skin. He tells him that he loves him, again and again, and rubs a hand against his lover’s shaking shoulders.

Though it may be years still before the thought occurs to Matt, Anthony recognizes - the burden of age, he supposes - what Matthew has already sacrificed for him. Nearly two years living a new life in a new country, two years of university, that while others his age in newfound freedom spread their wings and learned the span of them, Matthew has found a roost. Anthony recognizes his own difficulty. He is quarrelsome and stubborn and prone to being astoundingly unpleasant when given the allowance for it. He could not stand his own company were he in Matthew’s shoes for more than a swift fuck.

Instead, Matthew has given him his time. His attention. His youth. His energy and his broad shoulders upon which Anthony has draped himself, cumbersome and dour. Whether Matthew comes to regret spending his young and ideal years this way cannot yet be known.

But Anthony can at least endeavor to ease the burden.

And yet for all of that maudlin thinking, this is not a debt that Anthony is paying, agreeing to go with Matthew. It is - as he said - an honor, to be wanted, included, invited, desired. It is a wonder to think that perhaps, even keeping the nature of their affection at polite distance, Matthew wishes Anthony to be a part of the family he so clearly loves.

What could be a greater pleasure than that?

As Matthew’s gentle sobs hitch slower, Anthony tilts his head to nuzzle against his temple. He presses his smile against him and feels it returned. A deep breath fills him with the ancient knowledge of home and love, mingled curiously in this place, with this extraordinary young man. He touches a kiss to Matthew’s blotchy cheek and grins a little, rocking him just enough to move the cooling water around them.

“I should have said that I expect you to receive exemplary marks on your essays.”

“Yes, sir,” Matt tells him, smiling wider before he brings up a hand to wipe his face and wash it clean. A moment more they sit together like this, before Anthony moves to stand and Matt follows, both reaching for towels to dry themselves as Matt reaches to empty the tub and uses the corner of his towel to wipe up the smeared cigarette ash from the floor.

They both go through to Anthony’s room, finding the table set for two with supper. Steaming potatoes and meat, broccoli on the side. Two glasses of wine and the bottle left for them to enjoy together. Something else beneath a silver tray that Matthew assumes to be dessert. He looks to the door, closed and locked behind Frank when he had come in to leave this for them.

“Should we dress for dinner?” Matthew asks, amused.

Anthony lifts the slip of paper, folded in two, with his name written neatly across the front. He takes a moment to read the polite note that, thinly veiled, conveys that they were not welcomed to supper by the madam of the house. Snorting softly, he folds it again and tucks it beneath his plate, regarding Matthew who wears no more than a towel around his waist.

“It seems a waste considering how quickly we’ll have them off again. There will be ample opportunity tomorrow to feel overburdened by clothing,” he says.

When again they must see his mother.

When they go to bury his father.

Matthew watches Anthony fill their glasses with wine, and lift his in toast. He pads closer to mirror the motion, and takes in the firmer lines of Anthony’s body here, how he carries himself within this place. It is not hard, even past the rim of his glass as he sips, to imagine Anthony among the public school boys at Cambridge, refined and elegant and with a perverse decadence protected by the privilege of his birth.

He allows that those things still exist in Anthony even without the protection of name and status.

Matthew reaches for his chair but Anthony’s hum stops him. Eyes narrowed dark and mischievous, Anthony swallows a sip of wine and sets it back to the table, dropping his towel.

“Dress,” he decides. “Just because she’s forbidden us from the dining room doesn’t mean we need to be shut away like lepers.”

“Anthony, shouldn’t we just -”

“Eat in the garden? I agree entirely,” he says, swaning with long strides to the closet where his things have been hung and seeking through them. “It’s beautiful at dusk, especially this time of year, and if we’re very lucky we’ll get to watch the glow-worms alight.”

Matt watches him, wide-eyed and astounded, and allows his smile to brighten despite himself. He turns to leave Anthony only to seek in his own room for clothes that would be appropriate. He brought some somber colors, and had to hunt through the very back of Anthony’s wardrobe to find the same for him.

He dresses in a dove-grey buttondown, chooses some darker suspenders and heavy linen pants. His hair he attempts to tame with a comb and manages enough that his ears don’t stick out quite as comically when he regards himself in the mirror. He takes a jacket for when the night grows colder, and returns to find Anthony in his room, deliberately buttoning a garishly bright shirt over his slim frame.

“Yellow?” Matthew laughs, and Anthony looks up at the sound of his delight, expression warming fond and amused.

“I’ve got to compete with them somehow.”

“With whom?”

“The glow worms, of course. Spectacular though they are, it would hardly do for me to be shown up by a bunch of bugs,” he snorts, slipping into a soft pair of seersucker trousers. They clash terribly with his shirt, equally mismatched red suspenders over the top. Matthew could swear he hadn’t packed half of these things, but he knows better than to try discerning all the mysteries of his poet.

He’s content enough to revel in them and wonder.

A cream jacket that matches at least his trousers goes on over the top, and Anthony turns to the table. “Frank will bring it to us, I’ll let him know on the way that we’re dining out of doors, and will need another bottle of wine to await -”

“Or we can bring it down ourselves,” Matthew suggests with a shrug, and Anthony blinks at him.

How quickly one returns to old habits, no matter how far one would like to think they’ve come from their source.

“So we shall,” he agrees after a moment, snaring up a fresh packet of cigarettes from beside the bed.

Matthew follows Anthony down, their trays and glasses in hand. They can hear sounds of supper, a polite click of cutlery against fine china, subtle throat clearing, soft words as Anthony’s mother and - perhaps - mourners sup in the dining room. Anthony ignores them but stops when a particular voice murmurs something. He huffs a laugh, surprised and delighted at once, before continuing on. Immediately upon leaving the house, Anthony lights a cigarette, tucking the emptied wine glasses beneath one arm and the bottle beneath the other.

“This should make for an interesting wake,” Anthony mumbles around the filter, before pulling it from between his lips and exhaling towards the slowly darkening sky. Matthew hums askance and Anthony turns to lead them around towards the garden as he takes his time to answer. “My mother saw fit to invite Emma to celebrate the momentous occasion of her guaranteed loss of a potential inheritance.”

“Emma?”

“My betrothed.”

Matt nearly stumbles down the stairs. “Your -”

“I know I told you about that,” Anthony points out, watching with a lifted brow as Matthew skillfully recovers, the tray intact. They proceed into the gardens, and one of the little tables set out for guests. “I’ve met her once, I believe, when we were very young, before I was sent to school.”

“You mentioned it,” Matthew says, setting the tray to the table and watching his poet wide-eyed. “You also mentioned you’d _never_ met her.”

“Can anyone know anyone as children, truly?”

“Anthony. You’re engaged to her.”

He draws a breath for another rejoinder, but Matthew’s look fixes his words in his throat and Anthony swallows them. He comes closer and rests a hand against his cheek, his brow, into his hair, and presses a kiss to his forehead as smoke twines around them.

“You make it sound worse than it is,” he murmurs. “It’s tediously common for families to make arrangements like this, far in advance of even the stiff and stilted attempts at obligate conception. I was promised to them before I was born, darling, it isn’t as if we’d carried on. It would have been astoundingly difficult to manage in utero.”

Matt snorts despite himself and shakes his head. “That’s archaic.”

“Barbaric,” Anthony agrees, taking another deep pull of his cigarette. “Bribery and bargaining just to continue the family name.”

“Which is?”

“Private and confidential,” Anthony replies easily. “Need-to-know basis only. And you, my love, hardly need to know. Evening, Frank.”

“Good evening, sir.” Frank sets the requested second bottle to the table, and makes quick work of laying out the careful and beautiful settings from their tray before retiring to the house. Anthony watches him go, finishing his cigarette before he puts it out in the ornate ashtray left for them, and settles at the table to begin dinner. Matt sits across from him, still watching him with a raised brow.

“He is not the boy you know,” Anthony tells him gently, “nor the man you love.”

“Would that I could have loved him then,” Matt points out, but he doesn’t push the matter. It is but a name, a name Anthony had long forsaken and does not wish to be reminded of. He takes up his glass instead, holding it for Anthony to refill. Anthony lifts the bottle and takes a breath, but before he can speak, Matthew raises his hand. “Don’t tell me,” Matt says, as Anthony smiles and pours. “Keep your mysteries, Mr. Dimmond.”

“Much obliged, Mr. Brown,” Anthony answers, as he fills his own glass in turn. “I’ve only so much longer to keep it, you see. You’ll hear the whole titled mess of it tomorrow, anyway.” He settles back, legs crossed at the knee and glass tilted in a toast. “Not even Hannibal knows that.”

“My mysterious poet,” Matt murmurs, taking a sip of his wine before setting the glass down and sitting forward to start on his meal. It is perfectly British, and tastes wonderful. Rich in flavor - surprisingly, considering Matthew’s experience with the campus kitchens - and warming him to the bones.

He notes that Anthony eats here as he does at home, and it never ceases to amuse Matthew to watch him. Fork held prongs down, a piece of meat speared at the end, broccoli and mash piled atop. It is the most impractical way to eat dinner, yet Anthony - for all his years of exile from this life - cannot seem to unlearn the technique. Matthew watches him and takes his time eating, enjoying the peace they have together in this vast and quiet space. There is no sound from inside that reaches them, and for a few moments at least it feels as though they are entirely alone.

“Ah,” Anthony hums, pressing the back of his hand to his lips as he swallows. “There they are.”

Matthew takes a moment to wonder who Anthony means, but then he sees them. Tiny pinpricks of light in the trees and shrubbery, so small they almost blur together, an ethereal turquoise not-quite-blue that unfolds like a galaxy around them. Anthony stops eating, but he doesn’t watch the little glow bugs, he watches Matthew, eyes wide in wonder as he takes the entire scene in.

For both, the strains that accompanied a life here fall away. Matthew doesn’t think of Emma, nor Anthony’s too-swift dismissal of his own evident concern. Anthony doesn’t think of his mother, nor the smiling cruelties to which Matthew may be subjected. Matthew thinks only of how it must have been to be here as a child, and in the moment feels much as one himself, a prince in a place of impossible beauty that only exists in stories.

Anthony thinks only of how beautiful the pale blue glow and dim of lights look reflected in Matthew’s eyes.

Above them the sky flares crimson, stoked by the sun’s setting across the horizon. Fading to violet and indigo and black, against the velveteen darkness sparkle silver stars. It is lovely here, and often Anthony has couched his memories of it within his poems of other places.

Perhaps he’ll finally write of it in earnest, through the eyes of one who is so worthy of its beauty.

“I love you,” Anthony tells him, tilting his glass to catch the hints of light within dark wine. “I cannot imagine that I could ever find another to love so entirely.”

Matt blinks, turning his wide eyes to Anthony again, and just watches him. He is captivated, transported to a place and a time he had only ever read about - it was always implied, referenced in Anthony’s sadder poems. For a moment he can’t actually breathe, overwhelmed by the beauty of it all, the power of it. And by Anthony himself, before him, now, telling him he loves him.

“I love you,” Matthew whispers, biting his lip and pressing a hand to his face, laughing into his palm. “God, this is insane. I am so happy.”

Anthony’s smile widens, even as he ducks his head as if to demure it. Matthew’s joy spreads like sunshine, luminous and warm and wonderful, spreading wide with abandon. He makes Anthony’s heart beat faster with only a smile. His laugh steals Anthony’s breath. Anthony could spend the night entirely, and the next, and every one after telling him he loves him and it would never feel like enough to convey the particular ache in his chest he feels in his presence.

Anthony regrets only not having brought his notebook on the trip with him, but consoles himself with the knowledge that perhaps a little distance will make the memories sweeter still.

“I’m glad you’re here,” he says, after another few precise bites of food, another few sips of wine. Around them the little glow worms blink in and out from their homes among the leaves, in the distance the house is lit from one end to the other in slow progression of warming electric lights. “May I tell you something? A secret that I’ll deny entirely if you whisper a word of it to the traitors in Oxford.”

“Of course,” Matt grins, shaking his head. “I won’t.”

Anthony hums a little, and with a dab of napkin to his lips, reclines back to seek a cigarette.

“I’ve missed this place,” he sighs. “That much I’m sure you’ve already gathered - thank you,” he says, as Matthew strikes a match for him. “More a secret, I suppose, in that it could do untold damage to my reputation as an exiled wastrel, is that with you here, I feel at peace with what transpired before. To have you here now, and they in Oxford, makes it all seem suddenly very worthwhile to have endured.”

Matthew watches him with pride warming his eyes, his beautiful poet, headstrong and stubborn, allowing himself to accept his home - the place that had been, for half his life - after years of fearing it. Matthew thinks he would have missed this home desperately, even if he had been similarly evicted from it. He misses his own far less grand home every day, the smell of it and the warmth of it, the way some of the walls were a little crooked and the countertops were cracked. He would know it blind.

He would bet anything Anthony knows this home just the same.

“You will have to show me,” Matthew tells him. “Show me the home you remember. Not the grand rooms and filigree, but the secret passages and silent attics, back doors and the library.”

Anthony ashes his cigarette, eyes narrowing. “Who told you about the secret passages?”

Grinning, Matt shakes his head. “Lucky guess.”

“A likely story.”

Matthew draws a breath and laughs a little, holding the rest of it full in his chest that aches with sheer delight. “Are there really?”

“They wouldn’t be very secret if I answered.”

“You’re terrible.”

“And you’re stuck with me, I’m afraid. Finish your food and bring the bottle,” Anthony says with a sly smile. “Let’s go get lost together.”


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Thank you for coming,” Anthony says. “Here, I mean, not just now.” Matthew snorts, grinning, and Anthony’s smile spreads softly. “Thank you for convincing me to go.”_
> 
> _“Nearly dragging you, tooth and nail.”_
> 
> _“Thank you for that,” Anthony agrees, almost prim but for his pleasant weariness. “Thank you for loving me enough to do so.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta'd by our beloved [Noodle](http://noodletheelephant.tumblr.com/)!

It is very late by the time Anthony shows Matthew the library. They snuck back into the house and proceeded upstairs before the supper guests could leave the dining room to take drinks in the sitting room, or go to bed. Anthony had pulled Matt into a storage room and seemingly through it, to a cool corridor lit by one humming electric bulb.

Matt feels as though they have walked the entirety of the house without ever being truly in it properly. Stairs and sharp turns, steep inclines and cobwebbed brick. The wine they finish somewhere between the kitchens and the scullery, according to Anthony, and the bottle they leave in the vicinity of the main study.

Only when Anthony is certain, pink-cheeked yet keeping his posture and carriage, that the house is truly silent, do they return to it and head upstairs towards the library. The room is vast, as most are in this place, but this is muted. Dark wood and warm auburn, leather-bound books and the smell of old pages. Matthew loves it immediately.

“God,” Anthony laughs, blinking as his eyes adjust to the light and shadow that plays across the vast space. “It’s all a bit exorbitant, isn’t it?”

“It’s beautiful,” Matthew answers, and Anthony hums a fond allowance for that as well.

“I loved it here,” he says. “Of course, I complained loudly whenever I was sent here to study. I’d not even started school - they sent me off for my education - but I think they hoped it would keep me quiet.”

“Does anything?” Matthew teases.

Anthony stops in the center rug and regards him, delighted. “Never.”

Ladders on each side of the room stretch from floor to ceiling, held on brass rails. A thousand books, more maybe, so many that no one could read them all in a lifetime surround them beneath a veil of dust, on every subject and in multiple languages. Matthew skims his fingers along the leather bindings and dark shelves, circling the space slowly.

“Just here,” Anthony says, pointing to a spot on the rug. “Here is where I would fling myself to the floor rather than sit on the couch. I would read, gladly in truth, compared to the etiquette lessons and music study and fencing and God only knows the other miseries they inflicted on me. I would read but I would also thump my feet against the floor, lying on my belly.” He points to an enormous desk beside the windows that reach the height of the room, overlooking the gardens. “That’s where he would work, and I made certain to let my toes hit just so as to catch his attention.”

Matthew can see it, in the pale light of the moon outside and the electric lights still on in the hallway. He can imagine a younger Anthony, in his proper shorts and tucked in shirt, kicking his feet against the floor as he folded over page after page in whatever book he had been tasked to read.

“Did he get angry?” Matt asks.

It’s strange what memories surface above others. Particular corners and certain scents, moments seemingly inconsequential at the time that present themselves first. Anthony doesn’t recall with particular emotion being sent off to school. He doesn’t recall many holidays. But there are little moments that have etched themselves in him, dusted over in the passing years, that now come to light.

“No,” Anthony says, with a faint smile. “No, he never raised his voice nor let himself be taken by anger. But that’s why the rug is here.”

Matthew tilts his head a little, leaving behind the shelves to step closer.

“He said my name a few times, and I would stop for a few pages, and start again. It became a sort of game I suppose, and I remember trying not to laugh - you know, reading the same line over and over because you’re not paying attention to it.” Anthony turns to take in the room from another angle. “Finally he stood up from the desk, put his pen back in the well, and pushed his chair in.”

Standing beside him, Matthew looks from his poet to the place where he motions, fingers spread.

“He left the room and returned a little while later, with Frank. Over his shoulder, Frank carried an enormous rug, this one, and he laid it across the floor and spread it flat. It had been in the sitting room before,” Anthony says, eyes crinkled in the corners. “‘Excuse me, young sir’, Frank said to me and I took my book and stood, and he finished rolling out the rug.”

“And then?” Matthew asks.

“And then my father returned to his work and told me,” Anthony says, affecting a deeper voice, with crisp and educated inflection, a slightly different accent than his own, to Matthew’s ears. “He told me, ‘Continue where you were.’ And so I laid back down and when I thumped my feet again it hardly made a sound.”

Matt laughs, a quiet and delighted sound, and considers the room again, with this new information. He supposes, as he had before Anthony spoke so cruelly of his family and to what remained of it, that there are many happy memories like that one buried in the soft rugs and canvases and stone walls of this place.

“Tell me something else,” he whispers, settling on the rug where Anthony had once lain, setting his hands behind himself as he crosses his legs, watching his professor stand tall above him. “Tell me another memory.”

Anthony considers, turning on his heel and holding his arms out for balance, when the wine that warms his skin tilts his balance just a little. He considers, the huge space and his time within it. He considers the words spoken here, the lessons taken here. He considers the things he had forced himself to forget, having left here.

“Mother taught me to sing in the garden,” Anthony says, eyes on the place through the large windows. “In summer she would sit and stitch on the bench just there, and she would sing. Hymns and summer songs, anything that came to mind. I was little, I was very little, I could only make sounds, but she encouraged it.”

“You mentioned you studied music.”

“Dreary business,” Anthony says, though his tone speaks to the contrary. Loosened by wine and Matthew’s company, dizzied by the memories that bubble up unexpected from every corner, he moves in limber strides closer to the window. “They brought in a tutor for the piano. One of the serving girls, I’ve not seen her since we’ve arrived, but a girl who worked here then played the fiddle and let me pluck at it. Their quarters are on the other side of the house, so I don’t know that my parents ever heard it. I suppose that part wasn’t as dreadful as the piano. She was lovely, an Irish girl -”

“And the singing,” Matthew coaxes him.

“My mother hasn’t a fondness for creativity. Artists and musicians - authors - are as good as beggars in her mind. Of course she indulges, when it’s fashionable to do so and makes a good impression on guests. Singing with her, though, she always seemed to enjoy it, and I got better, as I got older.”

“Can you still sing?”

“Terribly,” Anthony says. “I reached an age where she said it was unbecoming for a man to engage in such things and I stopped. I pretended to stop.”

“Pretended?”

“I would sit beside her with my books while she did her embroidery, and hum very softly as she sang.”

“You are a wonder,” Matthew laughs, watching him. He scrambles up when Anthony starts to hum, holding a frame before him as though to waltz, and he presses a hand to Anthony’s lips before he can get to the actual singing part and wake the house. They watch each other, close, Anthony’s eyes narrowed and Matthew’s wide in delight, and he leans to kiss the back of his hand, and Anthony by proxy.

“You are also very drunk, sir, you shouldn’t be singing.”

Anthony mumbles something against Matt’s hand and he has to fight down giggles just watching him.

“This is a library,” Matthew adds, solemn. “It would do you good to stay quiet here, show the books some respect.”

He doesn’t need to hear Anthony’s words to know what he says, purring a warm threat against his palm. Eyes narrowed, Anthony leans closer and Matt keeps his hand across his mouth, cheeks warming as they kiss with his hand between them. The touch of Anthony’s tongue against his palm is what finally breaks his resolve, and Matthew laughs as he lifts his hand and quiets Anthony with his own lips instead.

Anthony delights in the defiance of it. He delights in the warmth of long-forgotten memories from a time before it all went to hell. Most of all, he delights in Matthew, the brilliant and brash young man who has withstood the worst tempests of Anthony’s moods and loved him all the more for it.

He curls his hands in Matthew’s hair, grown shaggy over the vac, and bears him backward until the couch comes up behind him. They topple together and Anthony presses him down into the cushions, grinning as Matt holds Anthony’s bottom lip between his teeth. He snares Matthew’s leg and brings it against his hip, as their lips spread together and their tongues entangle.

Matthew’s heart beats too quickly. This is too open, too brash, too showy. It is at once incredibly arousing and truly terrifying. What if someone comes to look? What if someone heard them and followed? What if someone is waiting, just waiting for this moment so they can use it as blackmail against Anthony being here at all.

He pulls back to voice his concern and Anthony latches to his throat instead. Matt finds that all he can do is bite his lip and close his eyes and just go with it, because it feels so good, and it’s his poet, and his poet’s place, and he is creating a world in it that he could not have, years before when he was banished from it.

“Fuck,” Matt whispers, bringing a hand to his mouth to hold any more words inside. “Not here,” he mumbles as Anthony’s eyes narrow as though to take that up as a challenge.

“It is rather sordid, isn’t it? He’s not even buried. I almost feel as if he’s there at his desk. I keep waiting for the creak of his chair -”

“Yes,” Matthew whispers. He can feel the color drain from his cheeks, even as he laughs, desperately. “No, I mean. No, yes - it’s sordid, Anthony. It’s terrible.”

“You’re terrible,” purrs his poet, leaning low to leave another mark on his neck. Matthew’s quick to set his hands to Anthony’s shoulders with another helpless grin, and he tries to twist away.

“We’re not safe here,” he says, and when he feels Anthony relent, he strokes a hand against his cheek. “They will actually have you thrown into prison if they find you.”

“Doesn’t that make it exciting?”

“I’m not willing to risk you - or me - for excitement like this,” Matthew murmurs. He holds a kiss against Anthony’s mouth, and refuses to spread his lips when Anthony tempts him with it. With a labored sigh, Anthony relents, easing back to allow Matthew room.

Matt hums his thanks, squirms free from beneath his poet and bends to unlace his shoes, toeing them off. He regards the library properly, one more time in the dim moonlight, before sitting up again, holding his shoes by their laces, and turning to his poet.

“I adore you,” he whispers, pushing to stand and teasing Anthony by refusing another kiss from him when he leans in. “But you will need to catch me, sir, if you want anything from me tonight.”

“This morning.”

“And this morning,” Matthew agrees, amused, then with only a wink as warning, he takes off back out of the library and down the stairs on silent feet towards their joined rooms.

There are benefits to intimacy with certain spaces. Anthony knows that his mother’s room is distant enough that he could smash a window and she wouldn’t hear it. Anthony knows that the quarters where the help reside are further still. He knows that they are in the part of the house meant for show and guests, and though he doesn’t know what rooms are filled with the visiting bereaved, he knows how very satisfying it is to hear his heels hit hard against the floors of his hereditary home and hear them echo through the halls.

Ahead of him, taking a sharp corner, Matthew runs backwards for enough steps to signal Anthony to quiet. He’s laughing as he does, trying not to but unable to help himself. He’s faster than Anthony, fitter than Anthony, but bound for their bedrooms it hardly matters and Anthony follows in slow and satisfying pursuit.

He passes by his childhood bedroom, the door open but the room dark. Cold curls up his spine and he shivers, the memories there pulling at the same parts of his anatomy as Matthew does now from down the hallway. A flaxen-haired boy with eyes green as the gardens outside. His lips parted like petals, red and flush, joined to Anthony by glistening strands of overeager spit from their furious and unpracticed kissing.

Anthony remembers being so hard as they rubbed together that it was like being punched in the gut.

He remembers the sensation of a similar blow not long after.

“Have you given up already?” Matthew whispers down the hall, and Anthony looks to him, illuminated in silver by the moonlight through the window behind him.

No. Not now, and not then, and not ever.

“Behave yourself,” Anthony scolds him lightly, as he abandons the shadows of childhood for the present and pursues Matthew to their rooms.

“Make me,” comes the delighted whisper from ahead. Matthew hits the safety of their rooms before Anthony does, and yanks him in by his lapels when Anthony gets close enough.

The kiss is fierce, deep and consuming, the arousal and want entirely palpable in the young athlete’s body as he pulls his poet to him. Anthony kicks the door closed and Matthew moans, slipping his hands beneath Anthony’s jacket to slide that and his suspenders down his shoulders.

“Anthony -”

“Mr. Brown,” he purrs, curling his hands in Matthew’s suspenders in turn to walk him backwards towards the bed. His own, Matthew’s, it doesn’t matter - the joined rooms are theirs to share by intention.

Matthew laughs as he sprawls back, hardly able to push himself up the wide mattress as Anthony presses against him. He watches the canopy above the bed, held aloft by four posts, shift in the cool breeze from the window, before a suckling kiss against his throat pulls his eyes closed and his voice into a shameless moan. They are both that, now, shameless and wanton and willing to embrace the other even here. In the garden, Matthew felt in Anthony’s words and countenance both as Anthony sought for old wounds and found them healed over.

He felt his poet breathe, sweet as the night air itself, freely.

“I love you,” Matthew whispers, rocking upward as Anthony lays heavy against him, kissing marks against his skin. “God, Anthony, please -”

“I told you,” Anthony says with a grin, leaning back enough to work his pants loose, kneeling over his lover. “You needn’t ask.”

Matt laughs, drunk and happy and warm, and shakes his head for no other reason than to feel himself move, than to control that gesture when above him kneels a man he loves beyond words and reason. He wants to make new memories for him here, and for Anthony to think of making love here, rather than being punished for it. He wants Anthony to remember whispered adorations here, and telling stories in the library. He wants Anthony to be happy with how he farewells this place, because he’s aware that they may never see it again.

“You’re my everything,” Matt breathes, slipping a hand through Anthony’s hair. “Stubborn, beautiful, extraordinary man.”

He laughs and bites his lip as Anthony sucks hot kisses to his stomach and down from his navel, following the soft line of dark hair to the thatch at the base of his cock. Nuzzling against it, Anthony teases there, moaning softly and playing at growls and little bites. He is silly, he is wonderful. He is entirely Matthew’s, to have and to hold.

Anthony hums as he curls his lips against Matthew’s full, flushed shaft. Kissing with no less passion than when their mouths meet, he revels in the pulse that pushes back against him, stiff and yielding all at once. Velvet-soft skin heats beneath his tongue when Anthony spreads it flat to lick along the dark vein, from root to tip in a sinuous line. He teases the thin bridge of skin between revealed head and foreskin, and Matthew squeezes his hand across his mouth to muffle his moan and not wake the house entirely.

His poet holds him in sway with a bow of his head and a firm suck. Matthew’s hardly bared, only his trousers open and his suspenders down, his shirt lifted against Anthony’s wrists when he spreads his hands beneath. He meets Anthony’s eyes as his poet watches him, lips swollen red and slick, Matthew’s cock swelling visibly between them. His stomach tightens and he makes a helpless sound as Anthony lifts his head slowly, revealing his length inch by patient inch until only the head remains within his hollowed cheeks.

He rolls his tongue and laps up the hot slick beading from the slit, and Matthew lays back with a laugh.

Anthony was just so, when the door clicked open behind him.

His heart jerks faster.

Anthony slid to his knees, toppling from the bed, as his friend turned to hide his shame and pull his trousers up.

He makes a sound.

Anthony couldn’t answer when he was told to explain himself, and he couldn’t breathe when his friend said that Anthony had made him do it.

His eyes lift.

Matthew curls his hand against Anthony’s cheek, coaxing him upward with hooded eyes and parted lips and ruddy cheeks, and Anthony meets him in a fierce kiss. He lets it go. He lets it all go because he is here, now, alive and defiant. They are here together, unapologetic for their passion and proud in their love. Because of that night, Anthony found a life of his own, outside these ancient walls.

Because of that night, Anthony found Tobias and Franklyn.

Because of that night, he found Hannibal, and Will found them.

Because of that night he cavorted across the rooftops of Montmartre and was sick in La Seine. He traveled the world and helped win a war. He published books of poetry and taught students to love the written word.

Because of that night, he has Matthew, who looks at him with such love that Anthony can’t breathe, but he manages a laugh against his lips regardless. With a grin against Matthew’s mouth, Anthony reaches between them to guide their bodies together, settling back slowly with thighs spread wide.

Here, they are quiet. As much by choice as by woeful necessity, but it seems to hardly matter when they can feel the panted puffs of breath from the other soft against their skin.

Anthony keeps the pace slow, making love to Matthew almost deliberately, as much to frighten away his demons as to enjoy this with his lover. He adores him - Anthony tells him so. He will never let him go - Matthew believes him.

With a shift, knees drawn up and hips bucked, Matthew upends Anthony to the bed and presses into him deeper. He frames his face, brow to brow, lips too slack and warm to kiss proper so they brush, just enough. He is beautiful - Matthew tells him. He is worshiped and loved - Anthony believes him.

Anthony slips his arms around Matthew's neck, his legs hitch around his skinny waist. He holds to him as if he were the only solid ground in a stormy sea, a constant in a world that reviles them, that forces them to hide, that cannot understand what they know to the core of their beings. Arching, Anthony bends beautifully from the bed and Matthew moves with him. Every thrust that joins their bodies is a delight, sparking bright beneath their skin, driving light into the hollow spaces within, filling both with a density of love made physical that pushes their breath into insufficient gasps.

With a grin tilted to Matthew's cheek, Anthony slips an arm free and begins to slip it between them. Against his own stretched skin, flushed hot around Matthew's cock, he rubs his fingers to feel himself so full. A broken sound, such pleasure in his voice that it cracks, presses from his lips to Matthew's ear.

"God save me," he laughs weak, "but I love your cock."

“Good,” Matt laughs, nose wrinkling in pleasure as he starts to move faster, starts to push Anthony to his brink with slow and deliberate ease. He sits up, knees spread to the side on the bed beneath Anthony’s splayed thighs, and watches. He runs his hand up Anthony’s chest, curls his fingers, runs it back down again.

He touches and caresses, kneads like a cat would in utter pleasure and allows his voice to break on soft sounds. His stomach tightens and relaxes as he rocks his hips forward and up, turns them to feel Anthony shudder beneath him. He is stunning, he is beyond description and Matthew loves him so much.

He brings a hand down to stroke him, slow deliberate pulls that fall just out of time with his cock pushing needy against Anthony’s prostate.

“Come on,” he breathes. “For me, come for me.”

Anthony's breath snaps shorter and shorter with every turn of Matthew's fist against his cock. His head spins, dizzy with wine and sex, overcome by the hot pressure that fills him again and again and the beautiful young man who coaxes unconscionable sounds from him. Anthony stretches his arms above his head and his lips part with an unsteady whimper, shoulders tensing, stomach tensing, coiling closer and closer until his breath snares and stops and his eyes roll closed.

Dollops of white streak across his belly, his chest, up to his neck. Glistening beads pool thick when Matthew's cock squeezes, dripping across his fingers, and when Anthony moans, Matthew swears he can feel the reverberations of his pleasure in his own body. Sweat shines across Anthony's body, in flashing little flickers of light reflecting where his muscles move beneath pale skin in involuntary tremors. His toes curl and his body tightens, as if to beckon Matthew unspoken to the same release.

At least until Anthony finds his voice again and pleads, wanton, "On me, Matthew. On me."

The words nearly undo Matt right then and there. He pulls free with a groan, lips parted wide, and leans forward to catch himself against the headboard, leaning over Anthony as he strokes once, twice, and pulses hot against his chest. It is filthy and beautiful, beneath him the poet trembles, moves one hand to cover his face as though he’s weeping but his breathing remains steady.

Matthew bends to kiss him.

“Filthy boy,” he whispers, grinning, before he kisses him again. “I love you.”

From beneath his hand, lifted just enough to frame Matthew's face in turn, Anthony grins red-cheeked and drowsy. They share a dozen little kisses, more maybe, no longer the desperate desire that drove them fiercely together but a fond affection arisen from tenderness and time rather than lust. Each one prickles Anthony's skin with goose-pimples, each one makes Matthew's grin widen, crooked.

"You've ruined me," Anthony murmurs, feigning dismay as he finally drops his hand and traces his fingers through their seed mingled against his skin. "Look at what you've done, Mr. Brown. How sinful you are."

With a bead of pearlescent come on his fingertip, Anthony meets Matthew's eyes. He brings it to his own lips and curls them around, a flash of tongue, mouth reddened from sucking and kissing and panting. Creases fan around his eyes with delight as he seeks between Matthew's eyes, and performs the elegant, decadent motion again.

Matthew swears and bends to kiss Anthony again, catching his finger between their lips as he does. This is filthier, lovelier, entirely organic and so strangely intimate. They touch and taste and kiss until they tremble from the cool breeze and Matthew sits back with a groan and arches his shoulders before climbing from bed.

He returns to clean Anthony up, warm towels, one to gather with, one to wipe, and then returns them to the bathroom. He closes the window, too, and looks out to the endless stars in the sky. They’re nearing dawn, now, regrettably, but he still takes a moment to let the eternity of it all, the scope and unfathomable distance soothe him before he returns to bed.

It was never even a discussion between them that they would share a bed here. In the morning, early, Matthew would sneak back to his room and ruffle the sheets to make them look slept in, and no one would be the wiser. For now, he crawls in behind Anthony and buries his nose in his unkempt hair as he wraps an arm and a leg around to hold him close.

Sleep does not evade Anthony as he thought it might here. It finds him quickly, weighing down his limbs as he pushes a leg between Matthew’s and squeezes Matthew’s arms against him. Made heavy not by intoxication of drink but by his student, his athlete, his lover and his friend, Anthony’s eyes drift closed with a little hum, as Matthew’s breath warms his neck.

“Thank you for coming,” Anthony says. “Here, I mean, not just now.” Matthew snorts, grinning, and Anthony’s smile spreads softly. “Thank you for convincing me to go.”

“Nearly dragging you, tooth and nail.”

“Thank you for that,” Anthony agrees, almost prim but for his pleasant weariness. “Thank you for loving me enough to do so.”

Matthew spreads his fingers against Anthony’s stomach, and with a sigh, says only, “I could do no less, ever.”


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Should I feel bereaved?” Anthony wonders. “In truth I feel little more than a vague tug of memory, from very long ago. As if it were the funeral of a childhood acquaintance, whose friendship did not survive public school.”_
> 
> _He takes another drag, breath deep enough that it crackles._
> 
> _“I suppose that isn’t so far off, is it?” he asks._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta'd by our beloved [Noodle](http://noodletheelephant.tumblr.com/)!

Matthew wakes buried in Anthony’s arms, the older man asleep and snoring softly against his back. It is light outside, but not so much that they’re late. And surely, despite Anthony’s mother’s displeasure at them being here, they would not be left uninvited to the funeral itself.

He shifts, just enough for Anthony’s arms to tighten around him, his lips to purse and click as they open again and he continues sleeping. Matt smiles, turning his head to see Anthony behind him, lax in sleep, younger, this way, despite the beautiful salt and pepper ash that runs against his temples and tickles through the rest of his thick hair here and there. He is lovely. He is exhausted.

He will also be incredibly hungover when he wakes.

Matthew braces with a sigh, squeezes Anthony's arms around him, and then wakes him anyway. Gentle shaking at first, ignoring the deepening tenor of warning sounds his lover makes; reminders, then, that they have to still get dressed, and Matthew ignores the curses that muffle into the pillow at that. Finally he frees himself and kisses Anthony awake, but twists free before Anthony can start to rut against him.

"Where are you going?"

"To wash up and put on clothes, as you should."

"Why should I?"

Matthew wets his lips with his tongue and meets Anthony's eyes, where his poet peeks from beneath his arm.

"Oh," Anthony sighs. "Yes. That." He drops his arm with a _flumpf_ against the sheets and pushes to sit up, squinting against the sunlight. "Must we?"

Fighting down a smile, Matthew nods once. "I'm afraid we must."

"Bollocks," comes the curt answer, as Anthony seeks out cigarettes to see him through the burden of dressing himself. And for what? For this. That. Burying his father. Withstanding his mother.

Emma.

"What a miserable sobering up," he declares, in a plume of smoke, "from such an intoxicating awakening."

Matthew watches him with a fond smile, then he bends to kiss Anthony again, around his cigarette, allowing himself to relish the sensation.

“I love you,” Matthew tells him. “And we will do this with poise and grace so that no one can say again that you are not a pompous little shit.”

Anthony snorts and Matthew nuzzles him before stepping back.

“Don’t wear your canary yellow shirt,” he calls, before padding through the bathroom to his room.

“I am, and will forever be, a pompous shit,” Anthony answers, leaning across the bed to watch Matthew’s bottom as he pads away. “Let no one doubt it.”

And with that, he sticks his cigarette between his lips and drags himself groaning from bed, to seek out something appropriately dour to wear.

Black, black, and more miserable black, but for the white shirt beneath his long-tailed jacket, its collar perched high beneath his throat. Matthew returns similarly sober in his dress, and Anthony lifts his chin and second cigarette both as his student ties his tie for him. This, at least, is a wonderful stormcloud grey. That Anthony is relieved by the sight of grey is perhaps the saddest consideration of the day so far, and he sighs plaintive as Matthew kisses his cheek and smooths a hand down his waistcoat, to button his jacket.

“Should I feel bereaved?” Anthony wonders. “In truth I feel little more than a vague tug of memory, from very long ago. As if it were the funeral of a childhood acquaintance, whose friendship did not survive public school.”

He takes another drag, breath deep enough that it crackles.

“I suppose that isn’t so far off, is it?” he asks.

Matthew strokes his hair and turns his knuckles down against Anthony’s cheek. He needs a shave, but it’s clear he won’t do it now. He needs to sleep, but it’s clear that he will instead work his way through a pack of cigarettes and seek out the wine.

“I suppose,” Matt agrees, smiling enough that his nose wrinkles. He takes Anthony’s hand and brings it to his lips to kiss. He does it again, and again until his professor smiles, until he laughs.

Until there is a knock on the door, and Frank steps into the room, ducking his head to the two of them and averting his eyes as Matthew steps back.

“Everyone will wait in the back garden,” Frank says. “The procession will make its way to the chapel once everyone has gathered.”

"Morning, Frank." Anthony too ducks his head, uncharacteristically shy, and brings the back of his kissed hand to his lips to hide his smile and a little of the blush beneath his eyes. It takes him a moment, and a ruefully amused glance to Matt, before he turns. His fingers lace before him. He pulls himself tall. "Frank."

"Sir."

"Might I ask a favor, before we commence?"

Frank's attention falls for a moment on Matthew and Matt knows what the apology in his eyes means before he sees the bottle. A little thing, maybe a half-glass' worth, of dark amber bourbon. He extends it to Anthony, then withdraws it.

"There'll be no more than this until after the services."

Anthony inclines his head. Elegant. Gracious. Betraying nothing, he hopes, of the tension he can feel tightening with every beat of his heart.

"Of course," he agrees, hand extended as if he were a child awaiting sweets. Frank squints a little, and hands it to him.

"I'd advise pacing yourself, sir. We're not Irish, after all."

"God forbid."

"And you, sir?" Frank turns to Matthew, as Anthony steps away to work open the bottle. "Tea perhaps, or something small to eat?"

“No, Frank, thank you,” Matt smiles. “I fear you will be run off your feet with the rest of them today, I don’t want to give you trouble.”

“No trouble,” Frank confirms, but he doesn’t push. He waits patiently for Anthony to finish his self-medication and accepts the flask back. “We are expecting a full supper table this evening, sir, many people wanted to pay their respects.”

“Of course they did. Mother will be thrilled.”

“Shall I arrange for two places to be reserved for you and Matthew?”

“No, we shan’t stay,” Anthony replies, clearing the liquor’s heat from his throat with a rough sound. It only takes an instant for him to register the fleeting look in Frank’s eyes before he nods, and an instant more to see that Matthew too averts his gaze. Neither will press him. He does not wish to be pressed.

Nor, if he’s at all honest with himself - or bolstered by the first burn of bourbon - does he need it.

“For dinner,” Anthony adds, “with them. I can’t imagine she would have me.”

“She would, I think, if only to keep up appearances.”

“There’s a lark,” Anthony snorts, as he checks himself once more in the mirror. “Unfortunately, I’ve no interest at all in creating an air of wholesomeness for any part of my life. Perhaps instead we might, if it’s not a bother, have a later supper with you instead.”

Frank’s expression remains impassive, but Matthew can see that his lips tilt just a little, his eyes warm a little more.

“Very good, sir.”

“Frank.” Anthony purses his lips and shakes his head, attempting to look displeased.

“Anthony.”

“Marvellous,” Anthony sighs, setting his hands into his pockets and regarding the butler before them. “So, supper this evening, and quite an event before then. Have the festivities started? Shall we go?”

“Waiting on the final guests,” Frank says, smoothing a little grimace at the word choice, but inclining his head all the same. “After you, gentlemen.”

And so they go, Anthony leading the way with what he hopes to be a convincing confidence, entirely false. Matthew follows, not too close, and Frank behind. Anthony lengthens his strides, though doesn’t let them speed, as they make their way down the stairs of the emptied house, and out into the gardens where only the night before, he committed unholy sacrilege with little more than professions of affection.

He reminds himself of those words when he takes in the gathering before them. Most of the faces there are unfamiliar to him, friends of the family to which he no longer belongs. They pay him little notice, waiting in near-silence and dour black dresses and suits. At the fore is his mother, whose veil catches in the wind as she turns to regard him, her hand upon the arm of another woman, a younger girl with auburn hair and wide dark eyes.

Emma was always a pretty girl, but she has grown into a lovely woman.

His parents could have done worse by him, he supposes.

In fact, they did.

“Christ,” he whispers, slowing back to meet Matthew’s steps. “Do I go to her? Them? Do I go to them? Hell.”

“I don’t know what’s customary,” Matt admits, having been to, in his memory, no funerals at all, and never having seen a ceremony in England. “Would you have anything to say?”

“Nothing kind.”

“Something necessary?”

“No.” Anthony’s brows furrow, and he finds his own answer, moving to stand away from his blood relatives, merely taking his place in the company of mourners with his hands held before him. Matthew stands beside. 

How he wishes he could touch Anthony’s hand and hold it, tell him that this will soon be over and they can leave this place. How he wishes he could have held him longer in bed this morning, nuzzling and whispering as they do so often together at home. How he wishes, truly, that none of these cruelties had happened to Anthony, that he had lived his life here, with his choices and his wonders, and found his family supportive.

“I swear I’ll sleep for a week after this,” Anthony mutters, turning a quick smile to Frank as the older man pats his shoulder in passing to his place in the procession.

Their steps are steady - indeed, they were the last for whom the service was held, which causes at least a faint flourish of pleasure in Anthony. It’s a thin comfort. His ribs feel as if they’ll crack with every breath; his steps feel as if they’re set upon mossy moors rather than packed pathway. Only Matthew’s presence beside him - his gentle looks and sweet countenance, his evident concern not with the event at hand but with Anthony’s well-being - and the spike of bourbon in his blood are all that keeps Anthony from throwing his hands up and admitting defeat.

The chapel is small from the outside, traditional peaked roof set above ancient brick, but the interior is unexpectedly lovely. Matthew lifts his eyes to the beams above, and follows them like train tracks beneath his gaze to the altar at the fore. A stained glass window sparkles brilliant sprays of color across the dais, down the new red rug that runs between the pews. The casket stands at center, dark-stained wood carved with ornate flourishes of flowers in its corners. It is stern, despite those details.

Were Anthony’s spirit not the wild rush of rose and thorn that he knows it to be, growing unbound, and more akin to the carefully trained tea roses whose scent carries into the chapel, he would have been married here.

His children Christened here.

His casket here, as his father’s is now, and all the fathers of their line that came before, a line now ended by his hand, and that dog-rose heart that would not obey.

Anthony’s breath leaves him shaking, and he turns to Frank when a hand is brought to his elbow. His attention is guided to the front, where a seat is left open beside his mother. Anthony daren’t protest aloud but he pleads in silence to Frank, who speaks his apology without words.

Anthony goes.

Matthew watches, teeth pressing to his lips in meditative worry as Anthony walks straight-backed and proud and sits prim at the very edge of his seat. He does not look back, he does not turn anywhere, he keeps his eyes to the front of the church. Matthew takes a seat with Frank towards the back, because he has no connection to the family, he has no connection to anyone but the beautiful man sitting rigid at the front.

The service begins quietly, and continues in the same way. There is a lot of tradition that Matthew doesn’t understand - this is not a Catholic funeral. The pastor speaks, then he calls upon others to say a few words, and many go. Anthony does not move. His mother does not move. Neither look at the other; they sit as chess pieces on a still board.

Matthew turns to Frank and finds the man pressing his lips together enough to pale them, eyes brighter than before as he watches the proceedings.

The recollections are more of achievements than of personal memories, touting the man’s service to his country through his lordship, the legacy of the house and name that he maintained. There are hints of the man himself in his adherence to decorum and his unflappable nature. Whether it is his nature or those of the people who speak of him that keeps personal details from their memoriams, Matthew can’t be certain, but his son is not mentioned even by those who share credit for a well-managed estate and title with Anthony’s mother.

Matthew hears their last name spoken, but makes himself forget it as best he can.

That is not the name of the man he loves.

The man he loves is alone in a room of would-be friends and family, turning a glance to his mother as she seeks comfort in the young woman beside her.

Anthony is even less surprised by this undoubtedly deliberate slight than he is by the fact that he is not mentioned once, by any of them. He wonders at it, allowing the simpering praise of his father’s inherited achievements to become a drone akin to bees buzzing in a hive. He wonders what was said to them all as to why their son was suddenly gone. He wonders if any one of them dared express concern about it.

He represses the urge to snort.

He needn’t wonder. He knows the answer by their behavior. Why should they have risked their own ingratiation to the man - or the man’s name, at any rate - to protect a boy prone to such deviance? Why should they dare be cut off like an infected limb as he was, in seeing the true stripe of his father’s character? And even with the man lying cold and casketed before them, not a one turns more than a fleeting look of curiosity towards him, brisk as moth wings brushing a flame. Anthony is as good as invisible.

As good as dead.

And as the last speaker takes his seat and the pastor returns to the altar, Anthony sets his hands to his knees to stand. He’ll have no better opportunity than this to let them all know that they can rot as readily as the man lying before them. He’ll have no greater chance to inform them all of their own ignorance, his cruelty, his mother’s coldness, and that in being exiled from his place as lord here, Anthony has done far more for their beloved Britain than any of them could ever dream.

There will be no other chance than this.

And Anthony could laugh as his legs refuse to straighten.

He could weep for the weakness that keeps him in his seat as others stand to proceed past his late father’s remains.

His breath stops, as a childish and sudden panic curls his ribs too tight against his lungs, and he realizes that nothing he has accomplished, no choices he’s made, will ever allow him to hug his father again.

He refuses to cry, and in that refusal finds his breath caught shorter, his muscles pulled taut. More and more come by him to pay their respects. More and more brush against him as though he were nothing at all. Perhaps he is. Perhaps he really is nothing. For a cold, lingering moment, he feels the same shame, the same terror he had when he had heard the door slam behind him as he lay on the front steps. For one cold, lingering moment, he is a little boy again, in his library, kicking his toes against the rug his father had asked to be brought in for him to rest on more comfortably. For one cold, lingering moment, he is no longer Anthony Dimmond.

A hand sets to his shoulder and startles him badly enough that he makes a sound, pressing curled gloved fingers to his lips as he composes himself to look up.

Frank squeezes his shoulder, brings his rough hand to the back of Anthony’s neck and nods, just once, before passing him on his way to pay his respects to his late master.

Anthony watches as Frank stops just there, in quiet contemplation. If anyone of them knows all sides of the man, it is Frank. Frank who was there when Anthony was born and when he was thrown out. Frank who tended to the house and those in it as if they were his own blood. Frank who saw the good in Anthony’s father as he truly was, beyond the trappings of his privilege. And in observing Frank’s quiet dignity, Anthony’s own grief feels suddenly selfish.

Funerals are terrible to everyone but the one for whom they’re arranged.

And so as Emma looks on, with no rancor but only a strange sort of pity, and Anthony’s mother’s gaze turns toward him obscured behind her veil, he finally stands. He doesn’t do it for them. He hardly does it for himself, already dizzied by unwelcome memories that feel far too fond after so many years burying them beneath spite. Anthony goes for Frank, and stands at his side.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “For everything.”

Frank says nothing, neither of them do for a long time, and then the butler turns to the boy at his side - always a boy to him - and sets a hand to his shoulder again.

“He asked after you, when the war began,” Frank tells him. “I could never lie to your father, I hardly ever had the need, but you asked to keep our correspondence secret and so I did my best. He asked, and I found myself answering.” Frank tilts his head, eyes narrowed less in displeasure and more with the effort to stop them tearing. “He did not read the letter, but he asked me to tell him of the goings-on in your life, of whether or not you were safe. I told him of your decision to enlist as an interpreter.”

Anthony swallows. He doesn’t want to hear the words, he doesn’t want to listen and remember. He doesn’t want the flame of his anger that had burned so strong to wither into embers.

“Anthony, he was so proud.”

Throat clicking, Anthony shakes his head, once, and when he finds his voice it’s so small he can hardly hear himself. No, he says, because he can’t imagine it to be true and no, he says, because he knows Frank would never lie to him. Please, he says, because he can’t fix it now and please, he says, because he wants to, suddenly, he wants to apologize for being so stubborn for so long and to hear his father say those words and he can’t.

He can’t.

And when Frank offers Anthony the hug that his father can’t, he accepts it with a squeeze that nearly holds back the single sob unheard in the soft din of voices as the guests begin to leave.

They stand by the casket a long time, and no one tells them to move. People who still seek to pay their respects wait. Emma and Anthony’s mother sit patiently where they had the entire service, Matthew stands by the door at the back of the church and waits. He does not interfere. He will not.

When the embrace ends, Anthony presses the heel of his hand against his eye and laughs as Frank murmurs something to him. It is easier, here, he can breathe again. He casts his eyes to his father, pale and older, so much older that he remembers him, and after a moment more turns on his heels to descend the stairs and move towards Matthew.

“You,” Matthew starts.

“Don’t, please don’t.”

“I love you,” Matt tells him simply. “I love you.”

Anthony’s attention darts to those around them, at distance enough that perhaps they did not hear, or simply English enough to know not to react. It doesn’t matter, not really. They must all know who Anthony is now if they didn’t before, and his ignominies follow him like a shadow and it doesn’t matter anymore.

He’s free and he’s alone, all at once. All but for Frank who sees to the guests making their way to the family cemetery, and Matthew who stands watching him, hands fisted at his sides. His expression softens, exhaustion winning out over wariness.

“Thank you,” he says, his words from the chapel echoing, “for everything.”

Matthew just smiles, eyes narrowing with it, and nods.

Always, he wants to tell him.

Always, Anthony knows.

Matthew steps back and gestures that they return to the house, and follows when Anthony straightens his shoulders and takes wide steps to lead them both back to the enormous building, and away from the burial itself.

“Anthony.”

The voice is unfamiliar, and Anthony hums before stopping, hands slipping into his pockets as he turns on his heel and raises his brows.

“Emma,” he murmurs.

Gloved hands folded, her skirt whispers of crinoline lining in the breeze that brushes its hem below her knees as her low heels click closer. She is dressed not in the older fashion of Anthony’s mother, but with a modern sensibility dulled to black for the occasion. Her eyes lift from beneath a curl of hair held in place with pins, the rest gathered at the back of her neck in an ornate knot. Her gaze is gentle, uncertain, parted lips painted a pale pink.

She is lovely.

“I didn’t expect to see you here,” she admits. “I don’t think any of us did.”

“‘Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative’.”

“Wilde,” Emma says with a slight smile. “You haven’t changed at all.”

Anthony allows her the victory of his surprise, eyes drawing up in amusement. “Since we last saw each other as children? I should hope I have a little, or at least that I was precocious enough to be quoting Wilde then.”

“I mean in other ways,” she says, with a tactful glance past Matthew and towards the procession of mourners, before her gaze turns back to Anthony. He swallows and inclines his head in deference to this, as well.

“I’m afraid some things are immutable,” he says. “We may wish the mountains moved to make a clearer path, but there are some obstacles that simply must be circumvented when we are not strong enough to change them.” Anthony draws a breath and when he releases it, his stiffened shoulders ease. He searches between her eyes until the earnesty of her gaze is unbearable to him, and only then he looks away. “I owe you an apology most of all, I fear. I did not intend for my burdens to become yours.”

Though she inclines her head in thanks, it’s not without a certain warmth that pulls his gaze back to her. Her nose, lightly freckled, wrinkles in a secretive smile.

“Even as a boy, you were full of yourself. You’ve cost me nothing,” she tells him, almost conspiratorial in the softening of her words. “And in disappointing all our parents, allowed me a choice I’d not had before in whose problems I inherit.”

Anthony blinks. “Are you -”

“Engaged? No,” Emma smiles. “I am enjoying the freedom of a spinster. But it is by my choice that I remain one."

“And become a disappointment yourself?” Anthony asks, smile quirking. When Emma smiles back she is more radiant than ever. A part of Anthony wonders if they would have worked well together, if Emma might have been a good wife for him, understanding and clever - if they may have found a way around Anthony’s proclivities, and her needs.

“I excel in my choices,” Emma says, stepping a little closer. “Will you introduce the young man who came with you today?”

“Matthew,” Matt says, stepping forward, smiling despite himself. He can see how they would have made a fine match.

“Emma,” she replies, holding out her hand and grinning when Matt bends to kiss it. “He is a fine man who can befriend Anthony and hold his attention, even if it has made his mother furious."

"Not my intent," Matthew says, by way of apology. "I came to try and ease the waves that would inevitably stir."

"Funny way of doing that," she answers with a quick grin. "Isn't he a little young for you, Anthony?"

He snorts, as Matt blushes beside him. "Well, aren't you disarmingly favorable towards all of this."

"I've been to university, too, you know. I know what certain sorts get up to and I'd hardly have passed my papers if I let myself be concerned by something so inconsequential. Besides, half of London's bent these days," she muses. "It's very fashionable among those who can afford to pay the fines."

Anthony shakes his head a little and attempts to hide his amusement, failing entirely. How very different his life might have been had he stayed, had he returned, had he swallowed his pride and relented in his stubbornness. He can remember few instances of wondering such things wherein he imagined it would have been a happy life; now, he can hardly think of it as anything else. The irony is not lost on him, nor the quiet tragedy of possibility.

He takes her arm in his, with a smile to Matthew, as they make their way slowly towards the others gathered.

"Matthew is in his second year. Varsity crew and taking papers in medicine," Anthony tells her as she tilts her head in approval. "I'm afraid I can hardly make the same sort of introduction, however. Last I recall, Emma had a fondness for fell ponies and an unfortunate tendency to muddy her stockings when we played," he says, grinning as she laughs. "Tell me how you spend your days now, unless it's still the same."

“I ride horses,” she admits, “though I still have a fondness for fell ponies. But I have made an effort to keep my stockings clean, now, when I enjoy my time outside.” She brings up her free hand to toss a curl behind her ear. “I’m an educated woman. I now must present myself as such, though I must admit, studying poetry was incredibly dull after having read your compositions.”

Anthony blinks. Matthew blinks. Emma laughs and narrows her eyes at the two of them.

“I have found myself quite a fan of scandalous words. Unfortunately I hardly have the social life to inspire any of my own, but your words really do find a space between my ribs and warm sensations there I cannot ever understand or experience.”

Matthew licks his lips and turns his eyes to Anthony, brows up. “I believe, Mister Dimmond, that you have found yourself a new acolyte on whom to lavish your lessons regarding the written rhyming word.”

"And here I lived in comfortable self-deception, convinced unto myself that my poems were couched in metaphor enough for their meanings to remain veiled."

Matthew and Emma's gazes connect, and both laugh loud enough that they draw looks from the distant mourners. She brings a hand to hers and creases her brow, clearing her throat as Matthew tries to hide a grin. Anthony tries to make himself love them less.

His oldest friend, too long estranged, and his only lover, devoutly his own.

He is unsuccessful in his attempt.

"I would gladly play host to Miss Emma, should she wish for company only somewhat less stubborn than her ponies," Anthony says, with a lifted brow towards Matthew. "Indeed, we would be most disappointed if you do not come visit -"

"You're not going away again, are you?" she asks.

"It's hardly my choice. I cannot imagine the things my erstwhile mother has told you, but it is a credit to the strength of your spirit - or perhaps the insidiousness of my own - that she has not yet poisoned you to me. We are unwelcome here."

Emma cants her head, exchanging a look with Anthony's mother who watches them with discontent, before she turns toward Anthony himself.

"It's your home," she says. "Do you feel nothing for it?"

"If I did, what good would it do me when I've no claim to the place?"

Her brow furrows a little deeper, but with no more time to delay, she releases Anthony's arm with a squeeze, heels clicking over cobblestones as she makes her way back to Anthony's mother. He needn't hear her request for him to know he too is being summoned, and he spares a plaintive glance towards Matthew in passing before he follows Emma into the cemetery.

Here the mood becomes much more somber, and though Anthony can do little more than weather it, he feels a chill rise goosebumps against his skin regardless. He sets his hands behind his back, clasped, and takes longer strides until he can come to walk beside the two women with ease.

He says nothing to his mother.

He says nothing more to Emma.

He waits. And moment after moment, as the silence grows pregnant and heavy, he wonders if he shouldn’t just turn around and return to Matthew, walking patiently behind.

“Where do you plan to go now?” his mother finally asks him, her tone an exhausted low timbre that suggests she is caught between upset and indifference. As when Anthony had accidentally smashed a vase, or had a tantrum regarding playing with Emma in the gardens when he wanted to read stories of pirates with his father.

The leather straps creak as the casket lowers, and Anthony averts his eyes to the sky. He does not let himself think here of what Frank told him; he does not allow his own regret to swell choking again. Not here, not with her.

There will be ample time for mourning later, when it will not be used against him.

“Home,” he answers, “after supper with Frank. We can catch the last train if we’re lucky.”

“‘We’.”

“Matthew and I,” Anthony clarifies, as she draws her back a little straighter beside him. “We share a home together now, to my constant surprise.”

She doesn’t lift her eyes from the grave before them, her own mourning tightly held behind her veil and the masked expression it covers. “Don’t you care at all what people must think? There’s no way they haven’t noticed, Anthony. There’s nothing to stop them having you arrested.”

He breathes a laugh, or something that would be were there any mirth behind his sigh. “Do you care on our behalf, or on your own?”

“I hardly care for mine,” she says. “You’ve made it very clear how little you want to do with this family. You go by another name now, if I’m not mistaken.”

“So you care about me?” Anthony asks, tone far from convinced.

“Perhaps I care for the helpless boy in your grasp,” his mother suggests primly. “He is young, Anthony, much younger than you are, and naive. You are damaging him and his chances at the university by playing your games. Will you not think of him? If you claim to care so deeply for the boy.”

Both feel the blade sink slow between his ribs. A few attempts to seek his weakness yielded little give, but his mother has always been persistent in finding her mark. Anthony’s pulse jumps quicker, despite knowing her game, his guilt clicks in his throat when he swallows. He has thought about this. He has worried about this. He has lain awake at night sleepless with concern that the loveless void inside himself would drain Matthew of all the life he has to offer, and leave him another victim of Anthony’s need to be loved.

Will Matthew look back in a term, a year, at commencement, and mourn his wasted youth?

Will he look at the damaged old man beside him and wish he’d never touched that book so long ago?

When it is his turn, Anthony ducks to grasp a palmful of dirt and toss it to the casket at his feet, briskly wiping his fingers against his leg. Whatever comes of them, ashes to ashes and dust to dust, however long Matthew does not heed the dire warnings that Anthony has tried to make clear to him, he could no more force Matthew to leave than Matthew would go. Anthony will not rob him of his agency in that, no matter how deeply it strains his concern that he is robbing him of so much else.

“I must confess,” he says, “that I was certain I would hate every moment here. I was certain that I would feel no love towards my father, nor mourn him in the slightest. I was certain that I would loathe seeing any of it again, and in all that, I was wrong.”

“You often are,” his mother agrees, and Anthony quirks a smile.

 

“But you have read about me then,” he suggests. “To know I’m still teaching there. To know the name I took when mine was stripped from me.”

“When you rejected it.”

He doesn’t disagree. Matthew stands watching him from a distance, hands in his pockets, averting his eyes when he’s seen to be watching. “If you wish me to apologize for my stubbornness, you have it. Inevitable, I suppose, for a calf to grow up thick-skulled when raised by bulls,” he says. “But I cannot apologize for the way I’ve lived my life since then, and the way I will continue to live it. I will not.”

“You always were selfish,” his mother sighs, “even as a child.” She watches Anthony, who shows no signs of discomfort, who hides the pulse of his upset beneath his high starched collar. His mother turns away, looks to Emma, looks to the grave that fills slowly with heavy spadefuls of damp earth.

Anthony stands a moment more before taking a step back, ducking his head in respect to his father in the earth, and turns on his heel to go.

“Abelard put you in the will,” his mother murmurs, just loud enough to hear. “You remain, legally, his heir. He would not listen to reason, even in his last few months of pain.”

The earth shifts unsteady beneath Anthony’s feet and he stops, entirely. His steps and his stride, his heart and his pulse. He bites back his impulse to accuse her of lying - he knows she isn’t, not about this, not with the acrid burn of bitterness singeing her words. All at once he wants to laugh, triumphant and vengeful, that after so long what was rightfully his is his once more. All at once, he wants to cry, for lost time and lost love, because for half his life, he’s cut away the parts of himself that once lived for this place and the family who still care for him then.

And more than anything, in the shadow of the manor, he wants to be back in Cambridge, curled up beside Matthew in their creaking bed and whispering spite against the failing radiators.

With an apology to his mother, Emma comes to Anthony’s side, as he braces his hands against his knees and tries to make the earth stop swimming beneath.

“I tried to tell you,” she whispers, a hand on his arm, and the other on his back as she guides him straight and tall again. “When you said you were leaving again, I tried to tell you. It was such a commotion all up and down the valley when word spread that he was ailing and refused the barrister’s calling.”

“He’s being dramatic, Emma,” Anthony’s mother calls. Most of the guests have dispersed to the house for refreshments, though there are of course those who malinger to observe without watching. “Surely he’s only bracing himself to throw me out.”

The house. The land. The useless wealth within it and the bounty of worth in those who work there. The title and the name. A lifetime spent rejecting it all to build his own, and suddenly his once more.

 _He was so proud_.

Anthony finally breathes a laugh into his hand, certain that if he does not, he’ll weep.


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Sit,” Matt tells him. “Drink. Write. I will be home soon.”_
> 
> _“I will pine for you,” Anthony sighs, stretching an arm after Matthew until their fingers slide apart._
> 
> _“An hour at most.”_
> 
> _“Too long by fifty-nine minutes.”_
> 
> _“You, sir - and you’ll have to forgive my saying so,” Matthew adds, shoving his shoes on, “are the most beautiful mess I’ve ever seen.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta'd by our beloved [Noodle](http://noodletheelephant.tumblr.com/)!

Anthony recovers himself to assure his mother she won't be removed from the house. He recovers enough to thank Emma for her generosity of spirit, as she and his mother accompany the other guests to the house. He recovers long enough to watch his father disappear from him forever, beneath earth and grass and flowers, laid to rest among all the family long-dead that Anthony now feels shiver through his blood like spirits.

And then there's the other kind of spirits, which Anthony balances out with supper, shared alongside Frank and Matthew. Matt is made comfortable here, accepted with the same stoic grace with which Frank attends ought else in his life. They are all together as old friends and new acquaintances, stories exchanged from years together and those spent apart.

Frank, too, is told that he will not be removed from the house. Not ever, unless he wishes to go, and if he does, then he'll be given a stipend, enough to live on comfortably for as long as he needs, because he shouldn't have to work, still, after so long...

Anthony hardly has time to become maudlin before he's directed with a clapped hand against his shoulder to the waiting car, and he scarcely makes it onto the train before he's staggering beneath the weight of booze and exhaustion. Against Matthew's side, long legs drawn up into the seat, Anthony sleeps snoring.

Matthew keeps one arm around him, carding through his hair and stroking his face, and with the other he pens a letter by the wan light of the car’s little lamp to Will and Hannibal. He recalls his own experiences, does not mention the news of Anthony’s being willed the house and estate. That will be for Anthony to tell, should he wish, but he does suggest that Hannibal find a way to talk to Anthony alone. _To ease the residual stress of the visit_ , he claims, smiling as he imagines Anthony pulling him aside later and scolding him fondly for the suggestion at all.

The train keeps its steady metronome into the night, and even Matthew begins to nod off before they reach the station. It takes a lot of shaking and fussy cursing to get Anthony onto the platform, less of it to get him into the car. He sleeps that ride as well.

In the house, Matthew doesn’t even bother to undress his partner, and watches the poet crawl catlike to the pillows and curl up against them, promptly snoring within moments of his body hitting the mattress. Himself, Matt undresses slowly, folding his things and leaving the bags to unpack for the morning. He slips in behind Anthony, wriggling up against him and wrapping an arm around his middle. He doesn’t remember falling asleep, but he does remember Anthony sleepily reaching out a hand to place against Matt’s own before he does.

When Anthony stirs, it's with a groan and a grumble from his stomach. He blinks bleary into the sun glowing warm through the curtains, but without the startled twitch of the few morning's past in not knowing where he is. He knows just where he is, which bed, which house, with whom.

It doesn't much help his hangover, but at least he can be sick in his own washroom.

For the moment, though, so long as he doesn't move beyond bare motions to draw nearer Matthew, the room only spins a little. He blinks up to Matthew, mouth agape, snoring deep, and recalls in a rush of image and sensation the days before. Not the dour bits, not the startling new changes. Those he readily avoids letting into his thoughts so soon in the day, lest the room waver more around him.

He thinks of Matthew, settled bare with him in a big copper tub.

He thinks of Matthew, eyes wide with childlike delight as the garden glowed around them.

He thinks of Matthew, telling him with any whispered moment they could share together among the gale-force strife, that he loves him.

Again and again and always.

He loves him.

And Anthony doesn't feel the impulse to prod Matthew to waking so that he can make breakfast. He doesn't allow himself a complaint for Matthew to resolve, because he always does, whatever displeases Anthony in whatever moment. Instead he thinks of what he can do for Matthew, who saw them safely home and kept Anthony from complete collapse. He thinks of all he wants to do for Matthew, to be not as much a burden, but rather a partner to him.

He loves him.

Again and again and always.

It comes like a flood, heavy and cloying and wonderful, that love. And then it isn’t wonderful anymore and it isn’t love anymore and Anthony scrambles from the bed and only barely makes the bathroom before he is violently sick in the toilet.

Figures.

He sits shaking for long enough to get his bearings before he flushes and stands to rinse his mouth clean. He’ll need to dig out the toothbrush and toothpaste from his bag, so for the moment he uses his fingers to make himself feel a little more human. The bags under his eyes are ones a silent film star would envy, the pallor of his skin is truly atrocious, and Anthony makes a helpless fussy sound at the reflection in the mirror before returning, staggering, to the bedroom.

“I’ll make you something,” Matt murmurs, still sleepy but faring far better than the poet himself. “Coffee, certainly. Something hot for the stomach, too.” He passes Anthony his toothbrush with a smile. “Good morning.”

Anthony takes his toothbrush and lifts his chin, regretting the quick movement but swallowing back his bile with a grimace. "Allow me," he insists - no, he declares. "Allow me to make you breakfast today."

Matt's brow lifts and he sits up straighter, on the edge of the bed, a lapful of clothes in need of laundering beneath his hands.

"You're barely standing," he reminds Anthony, not unkindly.

"You underestimate how well I handle my liquor."

"I know exactly how well you handle it," Matt grins. "I just heard you handling it right into the toilet."

"Don't," warns Anthony, pointing with his brush before he turns - carefully turns - toward the bathroom again. "Don't say that word."

"Toi-"

"Ah! No," Anthony says, squinting before he goes to brush his teeth properly. "You have done more than enough and deserve to rest."

Matt watches after him, childishly delighted at his own silly disobedience. In truth, he is still tired. It is rather early in the morning, and if he doesn’t doze now, the heat of the day will prevent him from comfortably enjoying rest until evening. Though, he supposes, he could always make a valiant attempt, his head on Anthony’s lap as the other writes or reads or works during the day.

Or they could both doze, naked with the blankets kicked to the floor, curtains shut and windows open.

He sorts the clothes in his lap into those that need washing and those that could sustain another wear or two, and then pushes himself from bed, following Anthony into the bathroom and kissing his shoulder as the other spits into the sink.

“A lazy day,” he declares. “Nothing but necessary movement, the rest can wait another day or two.”

Anthony rinses off his brush, bending to splash water into his face and allow it to drip down through untended scruff on his cheeks. He watches Matthew in the mirror, shorter than he is, altogether lovelier, with distinct amusement drawing up the corners of his eyes.

“What else needs to be done?” Anthony asks.

“The wash - clothes and the sheets,” Matthew shrugs. “Might as well. I’ll need to go to the shops since we left the icebox near-empty.”

“I will,” Anthony says, and Matthew rests his brow against Anthony’s shoulder, snorting a laugh against his back.

“You will what, sir?”

“Go the shops and do the washing,” he answers with a squint, as much to dull the thrum in his brow as to look determined.

It is Matthew, now, who squints at him. Less disbelief and more amused suspicion. For the months they had lived together, Matthew had taken to doing many of the chores, as much because they needed to be done rather than remain neglected as because he genuinely enjoyed - and enjoys, still - caring for Anthony in even the smallest and most mundane ways.

“The sun will be cruel to your headache this morning,” Matthew tells him. “Why the sudden determination, darling? I can be out and back on that bike before the worst of the headache passes. I can do it.” He nuzzles against Anthony and kisses him again.

"You do too much already," Anthony tells him, turning to lean against the sink with a noise of discontent stirred by his own movement. He grasps Matthew's hands and brings them to his cheeks, kissing one palm, and then the other. "I ask so much of you, don't you think? And I give so little in return, it's unfair to you."

"I enjoy it," Matt tells him.

"Do you know how long it's been since I've had any motivation to do anything akin to this?" Anthony asks, ruefully amused. "Since always. I have never in my life felt compelled to do anything around the house -"

"I can tell," admits Matt, with a grin at his poet's newfound desires. "The house was a shambles. It still is."

"And you've now met the reasons why I've never had any need to endeavor towards," he pauses, grimacing a little, "labor."

"You'll be ill on your bike."

"Most likely."

"It wouldn't look very good for you to be streaming sick down the street."

Anthony's stomach snarls and he hums, eyes narrowed.

Matt strokes over Anthony’s hot face, under his eyes and through his hair and leans in to kiss him.

“Perhaps a compromise,” he says, settling to his feet again. “I will venture outside, for both our sakes, and when I return, I will watch you attempt to make us breakfast.”

“Attempt?”

“Succeed,” Matt allows, smiling and wrinkling his nose in pleasure. “Do we have an accord, good sir?”

“And the washing?”

“Can wait,” Matt laughs. “Please, for my sake, if that’s why you’re doing all of this.”

Anthony hums and brings their mouths together, lips closing softly against the other. He runs a hand down Matthew’s cheek, over his own soft scruff from shaving several days before. They are both unkempt, slightly dirtied from travel, and tired.

And happy, blissfully, foolishly happy to be home again.

“Very well,” Anthony tells him, smile widening as they rest their brows together, eyes closing. “I’ll miss you.”

“When I ride to the shops?”

“Terribly,” he murmurs. “Achingly. Overpoweringly.”

“I will make you a lemon water before I go,” Matt laughs, arching to kiss him again before extricating himself and moving towards the kitchen. He squeezes half a lemon into a glass and fills it with cool water, setting it to the counter. Better than sal volatile, he supposes, which he is certain Anthony would immediately bring back up again. Beside, he sets two tablets of aspirin from the little brown jar kept beside the sink.

He will need to bathe when he returns home, they both will. For now, though, Matt contents himself with returning upstairs to brush his teeth and relieve himself in the newly unoccupied bathroom, washing his hands and slicking them wet through his hair.

He takes the letter to post and makes a quick list of things they need to feed themselves for several days at least so they will not be forced to venture out again for a while, then goes to kiss his wayward poet.

“Sit,” he tells him. “Drink. Write. I will be home soon.”

“I will pine for you,” Anthony sighs, stretching an arm after Matthew until their fingers slide apart.

“An hour at most.”

“Too long by fifty-nine minutes.”

“You, sir - and you’ll have to forgive my saying so,” Matthew adds, shoving his shoes on, “are the most beautiful mess I’ve ever seen.”

This mollifies Anthony enough that he smiles, languid, and as Matt closes the door behind him, he sees Anthony take his tablets and begin the arduous work of drinking water.

Matthew’s bicycle is where he left it on the porch, his an ordinary black FN like every other boy at Cambridge, beside Anthony’s green French Labor. He clatters it down the steps and mounts it running, to skim down the city’s narrow streets and towards the shops. The day has yet to warm to the mugginess it will within a few hours; now it’s crisp and bright, enough of a breeze to wake him from what sleep still tugs drowsy from the long ride home last night.

To the butcher first, the greengrocer next, and dry goods last. Rashers of bacon and dark sheaves of lettuce, freshly baked bread and a little pot of butter. Eggs and cheese. Tea and coffee and cigarettes, and a small block of sweet chocolate. Anthony hardly eats until reminded to do so or moved by whatever spirit compels him, occasionally, to crave something luxurious and usually French. They subsist on simple things, most days, but even staples are a delight when fed to each other across the corner of their little kitchen table.

Finally, laden, Matthew procures a bottle of champagne, a kinder option than whatever odious liquors Anthony has left stashed around the house. Liquor makes Anthony unhappy, though the poet - especially in his cups - would argue that and most anything else. It makes him grim and occasionally prone to violence, though to his credit, never against Matthew; only unsuspecting pieces of glassware or books he finds near enough to him to throw.

Matt wonders if that will change now that he has found some peace in his childhood home.

He isn’t in any hurry to find out.

Champagne, however, brings out the side of Anthony that Matthew read about, the part of him that once ran wild through the streets of Paris and London. He becomes as effervescent as the drink itself, bright and sparkling and far too charming for his own good. While Matthew is no stranger to the concerns of drink - Hell, the States have even banned it - he’s also not unfamiliar with what happens when someone who enjoys it to excess is barred from it.

Better to mitigate, he wagers, than deny outright.

He rides back far slower, uphill this time, and belabored by parcels and bags. Sweat cools on his brow and sticks his shirt to his back as he drops his bike to the grass, and the stairs creak as he ascends to the house once more. The door is open, only the screen closed. The windows too are wide and the ivory curtains from within flutter out.

He whistles as he makes his way towards the kitchen, shoes politely toed off at the door, and sets the heavy paper bags to the counter. Anthony is in the living room, sprawled half-dressed on one of their sofas, arm over his eyes and pen between his lips. His breathing suggests he’s been sleeping much longer than he’s been writing, and Matt smiles fondly before padding quietly over to him. He takes the pen from Anthony’s lips, and kisses his sleepy _I wasn’t sleeping_ from his mouth before climbing onto the couch on top of him.

“Of course you weren’t,” Matt murmurs, nestling up against him and relishing the heavy arms that wrap around to hold him close. He nuzzles up against his poet and sighs soft as Anthony hums a note against him. They lay pressed tightly for a moment, several, and then Anthony strokes a hand through Matt’s hair and tugs the curls straight.

“I have lunch to make.”

“Breakfast.”

“Brunch.”

“Is this what they call a relationship compromise?” Matt laughs.

“It’s what they call a marriage,” Anthony mumbles, and Matt snorts.

“Then I demand my husband make me breakfast.”

“Lunch.”

“Brunch,” Matt grins.

“How quickly dies the bloom once a marriage is made of an otherwise flowering relationship,” laments Anthony, setting his hands to the couch to push himself up and huffing a laugh as he’s pinned. “What demand now? That I make it from the couch?”

“Can you?”

“Sod off,” Anthony snorts, grinning as he held down by his athlete’s weight and warm kisses across his scruffy cheek. He finds his hand caught, and the next in turn, their fingers lacing as Matt holds his hands pinned to the arm of the couch. A twist of Anthony’s body upward could be excused as trying to free himself; it’s surely only accident that brings their groins together.

Matt grins against his mouth, closing his lips to a kiss before tugging Anthony’s bottom one between his teeth, releasing slow. “It’s going to be very hard for you to make brunch -”

“Hard?”

“Very,” Matt confirms, pulling back enough to meet Anthony’s eyes with his own as he rocks his hips down again. “Achingly. Because until you’re done I won’t be able to sink to my knees between your legs and suck you down.”

Matt grins, bright and fiendish, and kisses Anthony again. “It would hardly do to distract you from your work when you’re still learning the finer skills of it, and I cannot give a reward until you’re finished.”

Anthony snorts. “Are you training me?”

“Are you making breakfast because you feel obligated?”

“No,” Anthony narrows his eyes. “Because I want to.”

Matt just smiles at him. “And I want to do that. But only after breakfast. I’ve been told to save dessert for last.”

The terrible euphemism is nothing short of a delight to Anthony, who laughs loud and earnest before dragging Matthew down into another kiss. Fingers curled in his lengthening hair, let to grow free when school isn’t in session, Anthony tugs and moves him, arching up when Matthew bears down, making space between their bodies so that they can bring them together again. He loves his kisses and his physical form; he loves his quick mind and dirty humor. He could spend the rest of his days just like this.

He wants to.

He wants to desperately.

And so he knows, with an unfamiliar but welcome sense of responsibility - not to himself, God no - to another. To Matthew, who’s yet to eat and went out to fetch food for them, which all seems suddenly a grave injustice. Anthony turns Matthew to the couch and slinks free of him, standing dizzy with narrowed gaze and a thumb across his lips.

“Keep me company, then, while I cook,” Anthony tells him, straightening to saunter towards the parcels and take them to the kitchen. “Keep me hard,” he adds over his shoulder. “Tell me something.”

“Anything,” Matthew answers, watching over the back of the sofa.

“Tell me - before you all but forced yourself upon me in my office - back when you were alone with my poems, what you envisioned most. Not the romantic bits, though I’ll want to hear those later. Tell me what you wished to do if we’d shared only one sordid act together.”

Matt laughs and follows him, bending to peel his socks off and ball them up. He sets them to the chair at his side as he leans against the counter. He considers. It has been over a year - nearly two years - since he had to only imagine, only assume; since he watched Anthony from afar on the green grounds and wondered.

He purses his lips in thought and parts them again.

“Kissing,” he admits, feeling himself blush when Anthony turns to him, almost offended. After a moment Matt lifts his eyes to look at him, allowing a smile to warm his features. “I imagined kissing you.”

“Of all my poetry and imagery, loosely hidden metaphor -”

“Loosely?”

“- you choose kissing me? I’m rather disappointed.”

“I never said I imagined kissing you on the lips,” Matt replies, lips pursing again, brows up as he feigns innocence.

There is quiet between them for a moment, and Anthony, still holding a paper bag aloft, finally sets it down and turns to find the ingredients he needs for a hearty breakfast. Bacon and eggs, tomatoes and bread for thick toast, no sausages this time, but he is fairly certain they will be alright without.

“Where, then?” he prompts, and Matthew makes a soft, damn near obscene noise behind him.

“I imagined you kissing me,” he admits. “Down my jaw and my neck, holding me still as you do now, when I squirm too much, pulling my hair straight with it. I imagined you would mark every line and curve of me with your lips before you ever touched me at all.”

Anthony’s shoulders straighten with a shiver that twists up the length of his spine. He continues his uncertain work, setting a pan to the stove, taking it off again, actually lighting the stove, and a cigarette while he’s at it. Matt watches with delight, both for the visceral reaction that his words create in his poet, and for the distinct sensation he gets in watching him that Anthony has in fact never cooked alone before.

He holds the knife as if it will leap from his hand and gut him.

“You want to be known,” Anthony says, cigarette perched between his lips. “Adored.”

“Kept from my own pleasure as you take yours,” he answers, and Anthony glances over his shoulder, before turning back to the unwieldy breakfast.

Brunch.

“I’m glad we’re doing this,” Anthony finally responds. “Not this, this is dreadful, but speaking rather than simply rubbing ourselves into a stupor.”

“Oh?”

“I’d never have guessed that one who so readily makes himself the aggressor would most of all,” he says, plucking the cigarette from his lips and sighing smoke, “wish to be held in submission.”

“Make myself the aggressor?” Matt laughs, leaning more heavily on his arms as he balances on the counter. “Sir, if you recall, you planted yourself right up there on my cock the day you brought me home. I, truly, was prepared to be quite content taking it up the ass the entire time.”

Matt watches as Anthony laughs and cracks an egg into the pan, cursing and adding butter after, knowing it will stick anyway.

“I imagined you would be quite the proper professor type actually,” Matt adds, amused. “Make me bend over your desk when I misspoke or acted too rashly.”

“Are you disappointed?”

“Oh, you hardly do that enough,” Matt laughs, but his delight is answer enough.

Anthony’s smile lingers, wrapped around his cigarette, as he pushes the egg around the pan in a facsimile of what he’s seen Matt do; he daren’t try what he’s seen Hannibal do in the kitchen. He turns the toast in the pan beside, and finally abandons the cigarette with its precariously lengthening ash in a nearby glass ashtray, so that both hands are free.

“You said once that when you were learning yourself, you preferred the company of older men. They were more present.”

“Grounded,” Matt agrees. “They knew what they were doing. Boys my age, those who’d even be willing to touch, just fumbled around and came too quickly and then scurried off.”

“And you,” Anthony asks, “always the blushing boy feigning uncertainty and innocence to them?”

“I hardly had to feign,” Matt laughs, squirming in his seat a little and curling his leg beneath himself to sit on it when he settles. “I was just as inexperienced as the boys my age I was playing with.”

He considers the first few times he had managed more than a quick rut and a slap in the face after for _presumption_. It is hilariously embarrassing how hard he had come, how quickly, how he could fumble and over-enthusiastically suck cock without finesse or rhythm.

“Once I learned, I could play the parts they liked the most,” he admits, amused, “but before? And as I learned? I was terrible.”

“We all were, darling. The tragedy is that most stay that way.”

“I can’t imagine you ever were.”

“Terrible?”

“Well, terrible in many ways,” Matt allows, grinning, “but not that.”

“I had the benefit of going to public school, and being the prettiest boy in my year,” Anthony says. “I was taught all too quickly by older boys how best to move and bend. I daresay those were my favorite lessons by far.”

Matt feels himself flush darker, imagining Anthony, his Anthony, beautiful and pliant and young Anthony, bending for others, spreading and setting his feet to the walls of the narrow bathroom stalls, his hands to the wall behind the toilet. It is illicit and wonderful, and Matthew allows himself to imagine it, to think about it, to pretend he was one of the boys teaching him, learning alongside him…

“Meat,” Matt says after a moment, and Anthony turns to him, brow up. “Add the meat to the pan,” Matt clarifies, licking his bottom lip into his mouth before slowly letting it slip free again.

“I imagined you fingering me,” he continues, as though they had no aside from the first question at all. “Stretching me wide and being patient, unrelenting, near-merciless in your desire to see me come.”

“And kissing you.”

“Everywhere,” Matt says, the word a near-whisper. “Seeing how much you could spread me, refusing me relief - keeping me in line with only a word when I ask if I could.”

“Teaching you,” murmurs Anthony, as their breakfast sizzles and he licks a strip of grease from his thumb, watching Matthew watch him as he sucks it clean. “Properly.”

The sound Matthew makes is answer enough. Anthony’s eyes narrow, just scarcely, and he turns his back to Matthew once more.

“Do you think of that still?” he asks, his words sinuous but his voice crisp. Proper. Matthew knows the tone and he slips his palm against his own straining erection. “Do you wish to be taught, Mr. Brown?”

“I want to learn,” he replies, tone warm and slick like caramel, and he shivers when Anthony clicks his tongue and flips the bacon.

“Do you wish to be _taught_ , Mr. Brown?”

Matt wonders why, even in his most divine imaginings, he never dared hope that Anthony would fuck him. He imagined touches, he imagined kissing and soft words and dirty words, he imagined intimacy, but he never imagined intercourse. He had held the poet on such a pedestal that the thought wasn’t even worth exploring. He hadn’t enough imagination from his meagre experiences to paint his visions clearly.

“Yes, sir,” he purrs in reply.

Anthony makes a dismissive sound, and continues cooking. He feigns disinterest well - he’s found few greater aphrodisiacs to the male mind than the animal need to prove their worthiness as a mate. In fact, with a sudden secret swell of pleasure that fills his cock a little stiffer, Anthony decides to have another cigarette, as he moves the eggs to their plates, atop the toast, and continues pushing around the bacon.

He can feel Matthew’s eyes on him. He can all but feel the heat of him at his back, even from a distance, as hot as the stove at his fore. Anthony has had moments of power like this, expressions of physical and sexual dominance over another, in the manner of de Sade, sans the literal filth that often infused his stories. Being of slight body and pretty features, Anthony more often was desired to take the womanly role, and hardly protested - he loves a vigorous and unrelenting fuck.

But there is a grace and beauty in the art of it; an intoxicating power in holding sway over another who fights and desires submission all at once. It is shared adoration of the other; it requires trust. It is something that Anthony has done for relatively few.

Matthew, in all ways, is exceptional.

The bacon looks done enough and Anthony plates it, hearing distantly the dismay of Hannibal who would look on the arrangement with horror. He turns off the gas and ashes his cigarette, smoke coiling around him as he turns towards Matthew, chin raised and cigarette aloft.

Regal.

Proud.

Demanding.

“Upstairs.”

Matt’s breath comes in a quick huff through his nose and his eyes widen in delight. Slowly, he slips his feet to the floor and stays on his toes a long time before settling properly. Without taking his eyes off of Anthony, who watches him with similar amusement behind his eyes and deliciously stern expression, he makes his way past the counter, fingers skimming the top of it, and out of the kitchen.

He doesn’t run up the stairs, he makes himself walk.

It’s far too hot, in truth, to be wearing much of anything, but he doesn’t take his shirt off yet either, shivering at the thought of being scolded for it. A pause, a tilt of his head, and Matt hoists his shirt over his shoulders with one hand, tossing the fabric aside to the bed before he stands and waits for Anthony to join him.

“Presumptuous,” comes the low voice from the doorway. Matt startles. He didn’t hear the steps creak when Anthony came up, and Matthew starts to turn to him to apologize. “Stop.”

Matthew’s throat clicks when he swallows, senses so sharp that he can hear the crackle of embers on Anthony’s cigarette.

“This bodes very poorly,” purrs his poet. His professor. His posh and titled master.

He could groan at just the thought of the word.

“Mr. Brown,” Anthony intones, striding closer, long steps like a large cat stalking prey. “You will do as I tell you. You will speak only when given permission to do so. You will learn to restrain your base American impulses, and behave as a gentleman of Cambridge,” he says, so close to Matthew’s back that he can feel Anthony’s breath against his ear. “You will learn if I’ve to leave the marks to remind you. Do you understand?” The cigarette crackles heat beside him. “Answer.”

Matt can barely keep his breathing steady, let alone coax his voice to answer properly, or coherently. They have played at power before, but never like this. In truth, the nervousness that runs through Matthew’s skin is at once excited and truly worried. What if he messes up? What if this game ends up being the change he so fears for them?

No.

Not this.

Not today.

“I understand,” Matt replies, biting his lip and closing his eyes in delight as he smiles. “Sir.”

He doesn’t need to see Anthony’s smile to know it’s there. Fingers brush down his spine, cigarette held between them near enough that he’s afraid for an instant of intoxicating rush that he’ll be burned. He isn’t, but the threat dizzies him all the same.

Anthony was scourged enough in his childhood lessons to recall intimately how they felt. A mixture of terror and arousal, snapped through him with every slap of a switch against his etiquette teacher’s leg. He learned because he knew what punishment would come if he did not. He learned because he wanted to be taught.

He knows, down to the pit of his belly and between his legs, exactly how Matthew feels.

“Your posture is abysmal,” Anthony snorts. “You slouch. You carry yourself like a laborer.”

Behind Matthew, Anthony casts a glance about the room for something that might suffice for a switch. He sees a ruler on his desk - why it’s there he hasn’t the foggiest - but it will work in a pinch. He pins his cigarette to the ashtray as he passes, to take up the implement and face his student.

He smacks the ruler against his palm and raises his chin and brow in tandem.

“Are you a laborer, Mr. Brown? Answer.”

Matthew swallows and it takes a lot not to laugh, not to press his palm to his lips to keep the sounds inside. He is getting hard in his pants just from the words, from not being able to see Anthony behind him, from just imagining.

As he did, months ago.

As he gets to play at now.

Matthew closes his eyes.

“Shit,” he breathes, wincing and laughing at once before he corrects his posture as best he can. “No, sir. Not anymore.”

“Not anymore?”

“I am a young man of Cambridge now,” Matt replies, biting back his smile. “Part of a proud legacy.”

“Bollocks.”

The hiss of the word cuts sharp and spills blood quickening between Matthew’s legs. He shifts to his toes enough to feel his cock strain against his trousers, but before he can settle to his heels, he’s swatted across the bottom. Another nervous laugh threatens to spill forth, but he bites it back, eyes to the ceiling.

“You find this all very amusing, don’t you?”

“Sir -”

“I did not tell you to answer me, Mr. Brown. Having it off at the docks and moving a boat quickly hardly entitles to you to a claim in society, let alone _my_ society. Extend your hands, please, palms up.”

Matthew starts to look towards him, questioning, but resists with no more than a twitch of muscle. His brow creases and he holds his hands out, as asked of him.

This time, when the ruler contacts his sensitive palms, it stings.

“Ow.” It’s barely voiced, just a breath, and Matthew flexes his fingers before extending them flat again, trying to hold his hands still. At home, in Baltimore, he had had his share of punishment. Sometimes he was tardy due to work, or how tired he was from the night before having covered a shift and gotten some extra money for his mother. He has felt a belt across his thighs, he has been denied the chance to play sports or go outside on a hot day.

This he has only ever read about.

This is something else entirely.

He raises his eyes to Anthony and parts his lips as though to speak before pressing them closed again without a word. He raises his brows in question, a smile peeking at the corners of his mouth even with the sting in his hands.

He waits.

Anthony licks his bottom lip into his mouth and releases it, slow and considering. He holds Matthew’s gaze until his student looks away again, eyes forward, and Anthony scarcely resists a smile at the deference. He circles slowly, languid steps, taking in every inch of the well-muscled young man standing with hands outstretched and obedient before him.

The ruler slaps against the curve of Matthew’s back.

“Stiffen your spine.”

He does.

The ruler smacks against each of Matthew’s shoulders.

“Straighten your back.”

He does.

It strikes his belly enough to leave a pale pink mark, and before Anthony can tell him to suck in his stomach, Matthew does.

“Better,” his professor allows, before setting the instrument beneath Matt’s chin and raising it just to the point of discomfort. “If you wish to play at being civilized, you must carry yourself as if you are civilized. Do you understand, Mr. Brown?”

Matthew draws a breath to speak, but holds it, eyes darting to his professor. Anthony smiles slowly.

“Answer.”

Matthew swallows, watching the way the corners of Anthony’s eyes narrow just slightly and soften, and he finds his reassurance there. He wonders how many men were lucky enough to see this side of him, how many were lucky enough to see anything beyond his sarcasm and wit, and the walls he had built with them.

Matthew loves him.

“Yes, sir, I understand,” Matt recites, allowing a smile to lift the corners of his lips. “Please tell me how to act,” he adds. “As you teach me how to be. I want to learn. I want to be taught.”

Anthony’s smile widens, beginning to etch around the corners of his eyes. He smacks the ruler across Matthew’s palms, and cannot help but note that even as his student swallows a pained whimper, the tent in his trousers twitches.

Naughty, wonderful boy.

“Do try to restrain your colonial tongue, Mr. Brown. I asked for an answer, not an exegesis.”

The vowels curl long, lazy past his lips, affecting the tenor not only of the posh professor that he is, but the bored educator that he feigns for Matthew’s benefit. Anthony runs the rough edge of the ruler down Matthew’s chest, across a peaked nipple, circling his pectoral and trailing down the railroad tracks of his ribs to his firm, flat stomach. When he clenches, Anthony can see every muscle ripple taut beneath his skin.

He resists the urge to tell Matthew to bend him over and make him moan, only barely.

Only barely.

Instead, he taps Matthew’s straining cock with the ruler and steps closer to him, raising his chin and rewarding his student with a smile when Matt, too, raises his chin in response.

“Much better, Mr. Brown,” he sighs, tapping again, again, firm pats enough to present a threat that he does not make good on.

Yet.

“Strip,” whispers Anthony. “Slowly. Show me your conformation.”

Matt lets free a shuddering breath and smiles a little more. For a moment he keeps his chin raised, his hands before him, and then slowly he lets his fingertips rest against his belt and buttons, working each undone meticulously and carefully. He keeps his chin up, his eyes raised, and only bends when he raises an eyebrow and Anthony nods his permission. 

He bares himself all at once, stays bent over to pull his pants off in one long tug instead of scrunching them. He stands to fold, hands them to Anthony when the man holds his hand out for them.

“Turn,” Anthony says, and Matt licks his lip before obeying. Just as slowly, just as deliberately, he turns his back to his poet. He takes his time to straighten his back again, and arch it. To widen his shoulders and roll them to give Anthony a good view of his shifting muscles beneath skin. He sets his hands behind himself, just covering his bottom, and laughs when his palms are struck again for him to move them away.

So he does. To the front, where Anthony is not yet looking, where he is allowed to hold them.

This is novel. This is fun. And Matt wonders how long they can both play before one desperately aches enough for the other to jump them, push them to bed, connect their mouths and rut like teenagers.

Anthony sucks his bottom lip between his teeth and holds it as he hums, an irrepressible sound of appreciation for the male form, especially that as exhibited by the fighting fit creature before him. He lets pop the ruler against Matthew's bottom and grins when he stands straighter, blushing all the way down his body. Anthony trails the ruler around the plush curve of his ass, cold metal slipping between his cheeks and up his spine as he slowly circles.

"Despite being a slouch, your _habitus_ is solid and your symmetry sound." He snaps the ruler against the outside of Matthew's muscular thigh. "You're like an unblooded racing horse. Lacking any pedigree but with hybrid vigor." Another smack against his other leg makes Matthew flinch and Anthony grin, delighted.

He comes closer, closer to Matthew's fore, until their noses and their cocks brush with scarcest contact. The end of the ruler he brings beneath Matthew's chin, lifting it, and letting its rough edge trail over the rise of his Adam's apple, to the hollow of his throat, and down lower.

"Perhaps I should ride you," Anthony notes, "to truly appreciate your strength of gait. Speak."

"Please, sir," whispers Matthew, almost trembling in relief to speak again. Anthony tilts his head, electric charge tingling where their lips nearly meet.

"Stroppy," he murmurs. "Impatient. Champing at the bit to bolt, and why should I imagine you wouldn't buck as soon as I give you rein? Neither a thoroughbred nor a gentleman, lie down upon the bed, Mr. Brown, we're not yet finished."

Matthew's throat clicks, cock jerking hard toward his belly, so stiff it's pointed nearly upward. Anthony taps the ruler in warning against it, and raises a brow.

"On your back."

Matt watches him, delighting in the feigned indifference, in the control and power Anthony exudes. Yes, he had imagined him this way, tall and proud and demanding. He had imagined bending to the man and his every whim, and in truth, as he obediently slinks back towards the bed and sits on it, this is quite the experience. 

But he had never imagined the warmth of the man, the gentleness and humor, the fact that he would be such a fan of cuddling, that he would delight in dancing to jazz in the kitchen while he cooked. All these elements that Matt had been shown instead of the shiny chrome statue he had pushed on a pedestal, all of them, are the reason he loves this man so much.

Regardless, this is divine.

Matthew settles on his back and resists the urge or draw up his knees, to spread his legs, to touch himself or do anything at all. He waits. He watches Anthony with the deepest fondness and he waits.

Anthony claps the ruler against his hand, his smile peeking free in the corners of eyes and mouth alike when Matthew twitches involuntary at the sound of it. Hands folded on his stomach, brows lifted, Anthony takes a moment simply to appreciate the vast scope of events that brought them together, through strife and war, across seas and continents. With lovers left behind and left behind themselves by others, their friendship is unlikely in every way.

Anthony supposes he's always harbored a delight in the improbable.

"You will learn to bear upon your broad - very broad," he allows, "shoulders the burden of restraint. Neither will you shy nor buck, Mr. Brown, you will in every way restrain your base impulses."

The ruler set aside to the bed, Anthony twists open the few buttons of his shirt he managed to put together and sheds it from his shoulders with a flourish. His trousers, he opens, bare beneath, but leaves them loose around his narrow hips. A knee is brought to the bed between Matthew's legs, forcing them to spread, and Anthony slinks above him, coiling catlike into a long stretch that brings his smooth chest just above Matthew's lips.

"Are you an animal, Mr. Brown, given to wanton instinct?" he wonders. "Or are you, in fact, a gentleman, able to resist ignominious action for the sake of propriety - indeed, for the sake of society?"

Matthew's breath heats his chest, but he does not speak nor move beyond respiration. Anthony hums his pleasure and eases back to regard him, brow arched.

"Answer."

Matt laughs, a quiet sound that is allowed, and raises his eyes to his - beautiful, so beautiful - professor. 

“I fall prey to base instinct,” he admits, aching to curl his arms around Anthony's shoulders. “Teach me not to, sir. Teach me not to be a beast.”

Anthony’s breath comes warm and slow and he bends over Matthew with a deliberate and elegant arch of his body so their lips are nearly touching. Matthew resists. How, he cannot fathom, but he resists kissing him. He relishes the soft breaths against his lips, the warmth and weight so close and held with such fine control and poise.

“I love you,” he whispers, interrupting their game for just a moment, because that he cannot help. He does. Entirely. 

It’s nearly enough to ruin Anthony’s resolve, this sweet confession spoken so earnestly against him. He wants to drop against him, laughing, he wants to lay in his arms and rub their bodies together like overeager school boys, lacking any tact in favor of pure expressive passion. But Matthew asked him for this, Matthew who asks for nothing, and they have a lifetime, he hopes, to love the other without restraint.

For now, though, it is that word that Matthew wishes to experience.

And so he shall.

In answer, Anthony presses a kiss to the corner of Matthew's lips, holding flush together until he knows that Matthew knows he loves him too. It is only an instant, but the reassurance is accepted with a soft little sound that rises from his student's throat. And then, with a breath, Anthony leans back again, enough to jerk their kiss apart.

"Such sinfulness," he whispers. "Such depravity. No man of Cambridge, let alone the society to which he aspires, would withstand such a show of bestial inclination as this."

The heat of Anthony's hand against his chest is almost enough to split Matthew sideways, trembling resistance to withstand from arching against it. He follows down the bend of his pectoral, spiraling lazily around quivering muscle, towards an already peaked nipple.

"This is not your rebel colony, Mr. Brown, this is the King's own land. In what state would great Britannia find herself to be plagued by such debauchery as this? No doubt overrun by light-loafered fairies and shirt-lifters run amok. You cannot be faulted for how you were made, but you can resist response to it," Anthony tells him, inwardly delighted by his own absurd flirtation with bigotry. "And so you shall."

His thumb and forefinger grasp Matthew's nipple and squeeze, nose tilting against his cheek, lips trailing his jaw. Matthew asked to be driven to the edge with exploration. Anthony can think of no better way to spend their day.

Already Matt trembles, already worked so hard with their words and their play. He closes his eyes and allows himself to be that boy in his little bed in the little room he shared with his sisters.

Anthony touches him as Matt always imagined he would. Gentle yet firm, affection behind every brush of skin on skin despite Anthony playing at appearances of strictness and education. 

Matt bites his lip hard and doesn't restrain his sounds of pleasure as Anthony pinches his nipple a little harder and spreads a hot palm against it after. He tilts his head as it is tilted, raising his chin and parting his lips, pulse crazy and quick, skin flushed pink and hot.

This he imagined. This he now gets to experience. 

That Matthew envisioned this so long ago, in moments of loneliness and being alone alike - that he touched himself and knew somehow even then that he would be adored... Anthony is exhilarated by the thought of it. Each of them were loved before they knew they were; each of them desired for years before even meeting.

Anthony does not deserve such unconditional love as this, but hell if he won't earn it.

Kiss by kiss, he allows the stern professor to slip away. Kiss by kiss he seeks across secret hollows and warm rises of skin. Against the river of Matthew's pulse down to the ridge of his collarbone, up again to the tender skin beneath his jaw and dipping to the basin at the bottom of his throat. His hand strokes patient and soothing along Matthew's side, and at each station of Matthew's body, Anthony learns. He tastes. He feels every unique part of his lover, to know and cherish each inch.

"I'm afraid," he finally whispers, "this will be a very long lesson indeed."

“I need a strong hand, but I learn,” Matt tells him, smiling bright before tempering his expression appropriately. He trembles near uncontrollably now as Anthony touches him. His body is so sensitive that just a breath jags him to responding.

As Anthony moves down his body, Matt sighs and smiles, tilting his head back to bare himself further, entirely submissive here, and happy to be so.

He responds with a laugh to a tickling touch, with a squirm to hot lips grazing his skin. He smiles when Anthony guides his fingers into his hair and allows himself to stroke through the thick and heavy curls as his professor continues to worship him. Every kiss is a dream come true, fantasies long experienced in his own mind and hand now made manifest. He imagined this, but never imagined he would have it. He imagined this beneath the fierce hands and mouths of others, but never allowed that Anthony himself would be among that scant number.

The last, as well, for as long as they can keep each other.

Matthew arches, quaking, and Anthony is certain that he doesn't realize he's done so. He doesn't correct him, content to relish the sweet expression of Matthew's body rising in response to something so profound and simple as a kiss. Another kiss. One at the center of his chest and one at the join of his ribs. Each of that bony cage's bars down to his narrow, tight waist, across to the flat, rigid plane of his stomach.

This part of him, Anthony loves in particular, though all of Matthew's body is a wonder to him. His own stomach is soft, tender flesh rounded with too many years and bottles of swill; he is lean, skinny even, but not fit. Not like this, muscles tensing to tempered steel beneath his tongue, sinews snapped taut as ship sails in a hard wind. His belly tenses and eases in waves that arch his cock upward, seeking, and Anthony loses his strict composure with a groan that might as well be a prayer, sucked in worship to Matthew's skin.

Matthew laughs, allowing himself to draw his knees up, to cradle Anthony between them as he licks his lips and tilts his head back enough to bow his back.

“What did you imagine?” he murmurs after a moment. “When I so rudely stalked you to your office and to your lectures. What did you imagine we would do?”

"Do you wish for the truth?" Anthony asks, amused, as he allows himself to relax a little more to himself, a little more to Matthew beneath.

"Always."

"I imagined that I would tell you to piss off, perhaps in more professional words, and that you would," he answers, grinning against the sharp angle of Matthew's hip. He kisses it, and through a fine dusting of dark hair, begins to work his way to the other, pausing only to nuzzle Matthew's bellybutton when he laughs.

"And after that," Anthony adds, eyes narrowed, "when exhausted by reviewing all the myriad things wrong with me, I would go home and masturbate unto the point of chafing, imagining what had happened if I weren't such a complete drunken shut-in arse. Have you ever touched yourself when fraught with regret? I don't recommend it."

“I’m Catholic,” Matt reminds him with a snort, gasping, pleased, as Anthony mouths hot against his groin. “I would have gone,” he adds softly, “had you truly meant for me to. I would not push myself where I wasn't welcome.”

Anthony tenses at that and Matthew soothes him with a sound and a touch. He is welcome. They both are. And neither has left, nor will they, now.

Matt moans when Anthony kisses the base of his cock, and with a whimper warns him that he is close, that he will come, just from this.

"Of course you will not," Anthony tells him, "despite what you think. I know you are capable of waiting as long as I wish it." He wraps his tongue around the base of Matthew's cock, head tilted, and sucks a humming kiss against him. "Whether here or outside my office," he adds with a grin.

"My whole life, if I had to," Matthew murmurs, pushing up to his elbow to watch Anthony between his legs. He thinks of Anthony's worry in the hours before, that he takes but does not give, that he relies more than he can be relied upon. But Matthew knows the fears are unfounded, he knows his shoulders are strong and capable of carrying both their weight when needed.

And he knows how much Anthony has given him by giving him his heart. He remembers how fiercely Anthony fought to keep it locked away from any chance of being wounded again. Matthew's chest hurts on his lover's behalf; it fills him with anger to think that anyone could have hurt Anthony even unintentionally, let alone deliberately.

"Ease the furrow from your brow, Mr. Brown," Anthony drawls, licking another kiss to his student's shaft as he lifts his eyes, "and lie back."

Matt laughs but does as he's told, relaxing back to bed and spreading his legs wider as Anthony deliberately explores the sensitive hot skin there, enough to give Matt a reprieve and a chance to catch his breath.

He turns over with a laugh as Anthony calmly commands him to and spreads his knees wider against the mattress. Anthony makes a show of languid kisses and gentle touches against Matthew’s skin. He hums and rubs his face against the soft curve of Matt’s thighs before taking his cock to bend back and suck him deep.

With little noisy sounds, slick lips and eager throat clicking, a hum rising hungry from his chest, Anthony closes his eyes and wraps Matthew's cock in the sheathe of his mouth. His nose brushes his balls' soft wrinkled skin, his tongue curls and cheeks hollow. He suckles long hard strokes and shorter jerks of his curled lips around the head; he buries Matthew until his cock brushes the back of his throat and Anthony nearly chokes. Matthew can hardly moan for how hitched his breath becomes, hips raising, knees spreading, hands curled in the sheets beside his shoulders and lips parted against the bed.

Neither can speak now; neither need to speak. Anthony's words are his sword but not his only means of making himself clear - his body too can yield sundering beauty when he is allowed to use it like this. He once delighted in sharing that particular poetry with as many as he could find, different partners at different times, occasionally many partners at the same time, reveling in adoring hands grasping him and straining cocks seeking relief. Anthony wonders if it could be called maturity that he now glories in the attention - paid and received - of one, one above all others, one that will be his last endeavor and his greatest.

The heights of love that he never reached with any other, sustained and known with an intimacy that swift fucks and torrid trysts have never revealed.

Were Matthew to leave him, Anthony could not muster to seek another.

Not like this. Not again.

He releases Matthew's cock from between his lips with spit trailing bright strings between them. Firm hands part muscular backside and Anthony arches, lips pressed tight and parting with a groan, tongue piercing the yielding ring of Matthew's ass.

Matt nearly comes right then, lips parted slack and a sound pulled from him entirely involuntary and uncontrolled. Choked, almost, with how good it feels. He moans Anthony’s name, helpless and long, drawing out the vowels of it in tremulous ululations until he laughs, his own neediness and helplessness amusing to him.

He thinks of how desperately he loves this man, how contented he is every morning to wake to him, either already awake with pen in hand or snoring quietly and burying sweet snuffles against Matt’s neck. He thinks of how he had almost resigned himself to a lifetime of trysts and secret illicit meetings, that surely, surely, he could not find someone to love him so.

“Anthony,” he whispers. “You, please… I need -”

"Mr. Brown," purrs Anthony. "One must learn to -"

"Please," his student begs.

No - not his student.

His lover. His friend. His partner in so many ways, this exquisite crime not the least of them. Anthony sucks another kiss against his opening, wanting a moment more musk and sweat and heat and twitching muscle against his tongue, beneath his lips, before his own aching cock bids him stop. His stomach hurts from it, hard for an hour at least now, balls heavy and pulled tight against his body already.

"Turn over," Anthony whispers, touching a chaste little kiss against his bottom before Matthew twists to his back and catches him by the hair, pulling Anthony atop him hard enough to knock their breath from them and into a gust against the other's lips. He hardly has time to breathe. He hardly has time to spit into his hand and slick himself. He manages, and with a rough shove, groans long against Matt's lips as he buries himself inside his body.

They have always fit well. From the first night Anthony had proudly mounted himself and ridden Matthew until the boy could barely speak, until now. Long, aching, desperate thrusts as lips meet in slippery and messy tangles.

Matthew runs his hands down Anthony's body, nails digging playfully into the soft skin of his ass to push him closer. Neither will last long but neither need to, close and panting and delighted with this and each other. Fingers lace through his hair and Matt arches his neck to receive worship there again.

Whispered words in multiple languages - Anthony reverting to French, always, in his passion, Matt cursing in whatever language comes first to mind - and pressing fingers to yielding warm flesh. Harder and harder, closer and then -

Matt comes hard, a moan pressed to the lip bitten between his teeth, and shudders as he feels Anthony almost immediately follow. 

Rough gasps split their lungs, keep their kisses parted, their hearts struggling with hammer-hard pounding towards the other. Warm slick spreads between their bellies, slipping against skin, as Anthony lowers himself in near collapse against Matthew's broad chest. The heights to which he drew himself, nobility in every sense, now cave to softer intimacy. In Matthew's arms, he makes himself small.

In Matthew's arms, he can be, small and weak and uncertain.

He often is, about many things.

But never this. Never them. Not now, despite months of strife flourishing from black cracks left in Anthony's spirit. Not now, because they made it through those months and repaired the chasms, filling them with love instead.

He shivers under Matthew's hands against his back and tucks a kiss against his throat, just where he began his explorations. They catch their rattled breath and fill their lungs; they warm themselves again with the other.

"Was it everything you’d hoped it would be?" Anthony finally asks, bemused, stretching for a cigarette and laughing as he's wrapped up close again.

“More,” Matt tells him. “So, so much more, in knowing and loving a person rather than an idol on a pedestal.” He presses loving kisses to Anthony’s hair and soothes his trembling. “I fear, sir, that I am the luckiest man in the world.”

Anthony hums disapproval, eyes closing as he shifts to tuck his head and accept the kisses, the touches, the young man himself. "I regret to inform you that you're mistaken," he begins, but pauses as Matt laughs.

"Don't say it."

"I'm afraid I must."

"Please, Anthony -"

"You cannot be the luckiest -"

"Oh, God."

"- because I am already," finishes Anthony, grinning as Matthew groans. "Despite that you've bid me follow you to the colonies. Despite that you've rendered our fine - gourmet, really - breakfast cold with your seductions..."

Matt laughs harder, hand to his face as Anthony keeps talking, as summer grows hotter outside and their breakfast grows colder.

This is home, he thinks, finally kissing Anthony into silence. This is love.


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“You returned to that place,” Hannibal says carefully, “as the man you are, not the boy you were. Surely there’s something more you can say than that there were ‘moments’.”_
> 
> _“Hannibal -”_
> 
> _“Did you get a chance to mourn him?”_
> 
> _“I have no need.”_
> 
> _“Liar,” Hannibal replies softly._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta'd by our beloved [Noodle](http://noodletheelephant.tumblr.com/)!

_Will you come?_

_Yes._

Hannibal sent first, and Anthony isn’t surprised. He’s one of two in the world, outside the estate, who know his last name, and a compulsive newspaper reader for that matter - morning and night. But for all the requisite back and forth required to exchange two such tiny telegrams, Anthony’s grateful for the contact in lieu of simply showing up at their house in Oxford.

Again.

Both missives in his pocket, Anthony ascends the steps and looks back to Matthew, struggling to arrange their parcels and heft them towards the house.

“Would you like help with that?”

“It’s fine,” Matthew chimes. “I’ve got it.”

“Do you?”

One of Anthony’s three suitcases slips from under Matthew’s arm and he crouches to keep it from falling. Gloved fingers lifting in the barest attempt to assist, Anthony stops when Matthew exclaims, “No, really. I’m fine.”

“They aren’t that heavy, surely.”

“There’s four of them.”

Anthony parts his lips with his tongue, hesitant, but allows his boy to continue his particularly charming show of bravado and strength. He watches a moment more, giving Matt his due appreciation for such machismo, and then turns to ring the bell.

The answer is almost immediate, the door opening and Hannibal drawing Anthony into a one-arm embrace. He murmurs something in French and kisses Anthony’s cheek, holding him at arm’s length a moment to regard him. Satisfied, for the moment at least, that Anthony will not shatter apart on his front porch, Hannibal lets him past into the house.

“Dear boy, will you make the stairs?”

Matt laughs, tilting his head at Hannibal and nodding. The other smiles and gestures for him to take his time as he needs. The door remains open. Matt sets his bags by the door and accepts the hug offered to him as well.

“How has he been?”

“Honestly? Much worse going in than leaving,” Matt tells him, and Hannibal nods.

“Has he been -”

“Only there.”

Hannibal nods, once, and rests his palm against Matthew’s cheek in thanks before gently releasing him. It says enough, the warmth of his touch and the gratitude in it. Both know all too well the unwieldy force of the poet in their midst, let alone when he’s overcome by emotion.

They bring the bags inside just enough to let the door close. Anthony frowns at his buttons, working each of them loose. Ostentatious in number, glinting gilded down the front of his sprightly green velvet frock coat, he blinks when his fingers are replaced by Matthew’s own.

“You’re so attentive today,” Anthony notes, smile narrowing his eyes.

“Only today?” Matt asks.

“Every day,” murmurs the poet, feigning impatience as his coat is finally loosened, slipped from his shoulders and hung. He watches Matthew with a gentleness that does not go without notice from Hannibal, his own smile lingering faint as Anthony regards him. “Dreadful, isn’t it?”

“That you’ve convinced Mr. Brown to act as your handservant?”

“It took no convincing,” Anthony insists, “and you know that’s not what I mean.”

“I’m sorry for -”

“Don’t doctor me, Hannibal, please,” sighs Anthony, though with little rancor. “I meant that it’s dreadful seeing that old name smeared all across the papers. As to the rest of it, I couldn’t care less. At least they left my name out of the obituaries. Where is your better half?”

“Lectures,” Hannibal tells him, smiling softly. “It is Wednesday.”

For a moment Anthony does nothing more than blink, and then he takes a breath to curse, to apologize, to berate himself for his selfishness, and Hannibal takes the pause as his own to fill instead.

“The hospital is well staffed, and I was due for time away.”

“Hannibal.”

“Do I ever lie to you?”

“Frequently,” Anthony mopes, “and with great passion. I’m sorry.”

“No need.” Hannibal sets a hand to Anthony’s shoulder, up to his cheek next, and smiles, leaning in to press their foreheads together. “I admit it took me a moment to recognize you, seeing the name. It’s been years.”

“You didn’t even know me with that ghastly name,” Anthony mumbles, sighing and stepping back, making his way towards the living room as Matt and Hannibal follow at a respectful distance. “I’d hoped no one ever would again.”

“I don’t even remember it,” Matt tells him, smiling coy when Anthony gives him a look.

He returns the smile, and inclines his head. “Good boy.”

The house feels far too big, familiar in scent and sensation, but empty to him in its tasteful decor and conscientious appointment. Already Anthony misses the chaos of home, every available surface packed with books or papers or old bottles. He stretches in the center of the living room to work the kinks from the train ride out of his shoulders, and occupy more space in the process.

“Did you attend the services?” Hannibal asks, hands folded behind his back. He’s in only his shirtsleeves and a waistcoat, but somehow more elegant for it.

Anthony looks up towards him from his cigarettes, slipping one between his lips. “We did, yes.”

“Both of you.”

“Mr. Brown thought it would be good for me to be present.”

“And was it?”

“Good for me?”

“Yes.”

He regards Hannibal with dismay for even asking the question, but after a moment, allows, “There were moments.”

When he doesn’t find his lighter after two pat-downs of his jacket and trousers, Matthew yields a look of mild embarrassment to Hannibal and steps nearer to his poet, to produce a flame for him. Anthony’s hands frame his as the cigarette flares. His eyes dart back to the doctor, drawn all tall in his observation. Anthony squints.

“You’re giving me that look again, Hannibal. What is it?”

“You returned to that place,” Hannibal says carefully, “as the man you are, not the boy you were. Surely there’s something more you can say than that there were ‘moments’.”

“Hannibal -”

“Did you get a chance to mourn him?”

“I have no need.”

“Liar,” Hannibal replies softly. It’s so fond, so sad, that Matt feels his chest tighten just hearing it. He wonders about the stories that were told to Hannibal, that Matthew will not and would not hear. He wonders how many nights Anthony spent sobbing against this man’s chest, and how he was always soothed.

It is not jealousy. It’s been a long time since jealousy.

It is a hope that one day he can speak as softly, as simply and as fondly, and have such a profound affect on the poet as well.

He does what he can. Every day. Always. Now, too, in resting his hand against the small of Anthony’s back. He strokes his thumb when tense and secret muscles loosen beneath his touch.

He’s much more than a handservant, however good-natured the jest.

Anthony finally sighs, a malingering noise. He crosses one arm over his stomach, holding the elbow of the other, cigarette held aloft. “Aren’t you even going to offer me a drink before you make me relive my father’s funeral?”

There is acquiescence in this, and Hannibal notes it with a piqued brow. Anthony has taken great pains to never refer to the man by that title, instead creating an admirably long list of euphemisms to maintain a comfortable distance. _The man who sired me_ has always been a particular favorite. _Keeper of the family name_ another.

Never father.

Never Anthony his son.

“It’s a little early yet for drinks,” Hannibal says gently. Anthony brings his cigarette to his lips, coiling the smoke across his tongue, his gaze laid even on Hannibal before finally relenting. He’s got no energy in him to play at discord, let alone with Hannibal, let alone with Matt watching. Exhaling, Anthony turns to the couch and settles, long legs crossed at the knee.

“He left me the estate.”

Hannibal blinks, lips parting gently. Anthony merely raises his eyebrows as though to emphasize his point and brings the cigarette to his lips again.

“Much to my mother’s evident and abundant displeasure, I was not struck from the will. I’ve no use for the place, however, and as she is more than happy to keep living there, I am more than happy never to visit again.”

Hannibal makes a gentle sound, deep in his throat, and looks to Matt who simply shrugs.

“Being heir to an estate comes with responsibilities, Anthony.”

“Will you truly lecture me now? You?” Anthony wrinkles his nose as he smiles. “When was the last time you took up your responsibilities at chateaux Lecter?”

“I visited.”

“When?”

“Christmas.”

“With Will?” There is a long pause then and Anthony hums again, sucking hard at the filter. “Have him meet the family, then lecture me about my own.”

Hannibal acquiesces on this, at least, and circles to take the couch across from Anthony. Matthew finally settles once everyone else has, close enough to Anthony that their knees touch. Fully two-thirds of the sofa remains thus unoccupied.

“What possible responsibilities - thank you, darling” he says, as Matthew hands him an ashtray. “What possible responsibilities could you mean, considering first that the estate has run for many years without issue -”

“Do you know that?”

“Of course I don’t, but the place was standing, wasn’t it? Food in the storerooms, bushes trimmed. They’ve even got electric lights in it now. And second -”

“We hadn’t really resolved the first concern,” Hannibal notes, smiling a little more.

“Second,” Anthony says, “the only real responsibility entailed in being an heir is to make more of them. I believe I’ve made it clear to anyone clutching to the last, thin threads of hope for that, that they’d do well to let it go.” He slumps back to the couch, ashtray teetering on his knee and finally grasped in place by lazy, long fingers. 

“And yet he left you your name. Your title. Your legacy, proverbial and literal.”

“I thought surely there’d been a mistake,” Anthony says. “But were it merely an oversight, I can’t imagine she’d not have scratched me off the inheritance herself after this poor little lamb found himself squarely in the midst of our snarling and circling.”

Hannibal rolls his eyes a little and Matt presses his lips together not to laugh, as Anthony continues to smoke dramatically spread on the sofa. Matt has known him long enough, now, to understand that Anthony needs several hours, sometimes days, to mope, to pretend to not care at all about anything at all. Only then does he allow the changes to seep through his skin and settle.

This, he supposes, will possibly take several months. 

It’s rather a shock.

“You will need to care for the house, Anthony,” Hannibal tells him gently, again. “Your father kept it in check, perhaps his butler, perhaps the housekeepers, but with him gone, your mother will hardly bother to continue the upkeep.”

“I don’t care.”

“Perhaps not for her,” Matt adds, tilting his head to him, brows up. “Frank?”

This sets Anthony’s jaw a little firmer, lips pursed and tongue against his teeth beneath. He rocks his foot, watching Hannibal’s attention slip to the ashtray tilting against his knee. It’s Matthew again who breaks the tension, removing the ashtray to set it to the table beside, instead.

“Frank’s forgotten more about running a place like that than I’ve ever known.”

“It’s outside his station.”

“Ah, and there’s something I’ve always cared a great deal about,” Anthony says, an emphatic hand against his chest. “God forbid we buck Britain’s fragile social strata.”

Hannibal makes a softly pained sound before murmuring something that sounds distinctly like a curse. Matthew turns to steal the cigarette from Anthony’s fingers before he can take another drag. Drawing his leg up beside him, he rests his elbow against the back of the couch, body turned towards his poet. He takes a drag.

“It’s not his prerogative,” Matthew says, offering only a smile when Anthony’s mildly scathing attention is turned to him, brow lifting. “At his age, Anthony, after all he’s done?”

“You’ve met him,” Hannibal asks, genuinely curious.

“He’s delightful,” Matt replies, earnest, smiling at Hannibal as he turns his head to rest against the couch as well. He lets his hand drop a little to stroke through Anthony’s hair as he fusses and sulks, not looking at either of them. “It’s clear how much he loves Anthony, still.”

“Well, how could he not? Delightful as our poet is,” Hannibal replies, watching, amused, as Anthony’s light eyes slip to him with a blink and turn away again, feigning pain and offence. “Did you meet his mother?”

“I did.”

“Awful hag,” Anthony adds, and Matt snorts.

“More a siren.” Anthony turns very slowly to regard his lover, as Matthew continues. “Just as deadly, but far from ugly.”

“I’m told I share her looks,” Anthony notes. “Pity.”

“Are you going to be like this the whole time we’re here?” Matthew asks, not without humor. He earns a fairly scandalized look in response. “It’s fine if you are. Just seems a waste of a trip if you’re going to be so terribly sullen the entire time.”

Before Anthony can respond, Matthew leans close to kiss his cheek. It’s chaste and swift, with a requisitely demure glance to Hannibal after and a slight smile. Stealing back his cigarette, Anthony settles a little, slumping into the nook of Matthew’s arm over the couch.

“She was horrible from the moment I arrived,” he says. “I wasn’t much better, to be fair. She’d not sent the notice to me - Frank did - though why I assumed she had…” He shrugs, taking a sharp drag from his cigarette before crushing it out. “She’ll never not hate me. I don’t know that she’s ever not hated me from the moment I emerged squalling into the world, undoubtedly too loud for her tastes. I told her I’d not remove her from the house. I’d not cut off the money he asked her to receive from the inheritance. But I’ll do no more than that.”

“You’re worried,” Hannibal notes, softly.

“Yes. She’s furious that I’ve the audacity to still exist, and I’d not be surprised if she tried to press sodomy charges against me out of sheer spite. The return of the money she thinks is hers would only be the biscuits to accompany her tea.”

Matthew spreads his fingers through Anthony’s hair, tugging his silver-streaked curls long and letting them settle again and again.

Hannibal says nothing to that, just watches his friend quietly settle to displeasure. He hasn’t slept for a good long while from what Hannibal can tell. Hannibal watches Matt lean in and nose against Anthony’s temple to calm him further.

“Seeing Emma was nice, though,” he prompts quietly. Hannibal dutifully takes the suggestion and sends a smile, a raised eyebrow at Anthony.

“Your betrothed?”

“Still,” he says, his smile giving way to a quick grin, just as swiftly smoothed. “She seems content to keep it that way until she finds someone to her liking, and I’ve no quarrel with that. I’m hardly pursuing other marital options,” he adds, wry.

“She’s beautiful,” Matt tells Hannibal. “And very clever. You should have heard them carrying on.”

“Would that I might have,” allows Hannibal. “So not all the decisions your parents made have been poor ones.”

Anthony snorts. “That depends entirely on one’s perspective. If the intent was to pair two people together, both understanding of the other’s natures - my inversion, her intellect - and see them become friends together, then yes. It was a success. However, if the intent was to form a marriage, leading to the creation of new heirs and tying our families together with lots of little Anthonys, I daresay it’s been a catastrophe. Or I have, anyway,” he muses. A moment passes, and with no small delight, he says, “I’d marry her, if she wished it.”

Matt presses his fingers together gently against the back of his neck and Anthony yelps, twisting from the grip. Matthew just smiles when the turns to glare.

“In all honesty, I wouldn’t mind them married,” he agrees, resting his cheek against folded fingers. “He and she would host lavish parties, meet and make fun of far too many boring socialites, and then retire. She to her room and Anthony to ours.”

“And you would be?”

“A groundskeeper,” Matty decides, laughing. “Or a stable boy, which would be more scandalous?”

“Stable boy,” Hannibal confirms.

This certainly livens Anthony’s spirits a little, forced to restrain his smile by pressing his lips together, though it shows in his eyes anyway. “Do you know anything about horses?”

“They’re big and smelly. That’s it.”

“Perfect,” he says. “Just strut about shirtless, then, and join me in my chambers at night and you’ll have earned your keep.”

“It says a great deal about our poet that this isn’t the worst idea I’ve ever heard suggested for him,” adds Hannibal, and Anthony finally laughs. The dismal clouds that have hovered over him since the first telegram arrived seem to part. He uncrosses his legs and sprawls a little more, comfortable.

“Would you come to the wedding?” he asks Hannibal, delighted. “Dr. Hannibal Lecter and Mr. William Graham. We might address the invitation to you together, and introduce you as ‘very dear friends’.”

“The priest would love that,” Matt grins, nuzzling against Anthony’s shoulder where he leans to rest.

“‘My dear, dear friends,’” Anthony recites, letting his head drop back against the couch, and Matthew’s arm. “‘How is the horrid Other Place treating you?’”

“Awfully, truly,” Hannibal dutifully replies. “Miserable and cold and filled with Englishmen.”

“How ghastly,” Matt gasps softly, and Anthony snorts himself into another fit of giggles.

“What should I tell people if they ask about you?” he considers.

“‘Bugger all if I know’,” Hannibal offers, and this time it’s Matt who presses his laughter against his poet, both of them giggling like children. Hannibal watches them, fond, and then pushes himself to stand, stroking a hand through Matthew’s hair as he passes him.

“Now,” he says, “I can offer you a drink.”

“Thank God,” sighs Anthony, waiting until Hannibal opens the liquor cabinet before leaning against Matthew and stealing a smoldering, rough kiss when no one’s looking. He keeps his eyes open, pale blue bright beneath dark lashes, searching between Matthew’s eyes before smiling against him. He nuzzles his cheek and sweeps another kiss over his lips before asking, “What’s the diagnosis then, doctor?”

“Ask your nurse,” Hannibal replies, taking down glasses for them. “I’m certain he’s far more familiar with your particulars at this point than I am.”

“Well?” Anthony asks, still twined scandalously close to Matthew. He’s ached for this closeness, body tired from being held in such tension. His smile widens, and he runs a fingertip down the firm muscles of Matt’s neck. “Will I make a full recovery, do you think?”

“To your status quo? I suppose,” Matt considers, taking Anthony’s wrist to check his pulse, eyes on his poet’s the entire time to feel it speed. “I would recommend a bath,” he adds. “A shot, and a good night’s rest.”

“Not a fuck?”

“I only prescribe those in the most dire of circumstances.”

“But nurse, I’m at the end of my rope here,” Anthony bites his lip, widening his eyes and watching Matthew like a lost pup. “I cannot think of more dire circumstances than finding out I am now an heir with responsibilities.”

“It is a terrible affliction,” Hannibal calls from the kitchen. “I’ve suffered my whole life.”

Anthony laughs, squeezing into another kiss and curling his fingers over Matthew’s where they hold his wrist. He relents only to lounge in the other direction, a leg up on the couch, watching Matthew until Hannibal returns and brings each in turn a glass of scotch.

“It suits you,” Anthony says. “Your terrible affliction. You’re poised and restrained. You dress in only a few colors at a time and keep a tidy house. Your youthful seeds sown, you are now the consummate image of desirable aristocracy.”

Hannibal’s pleasure gathers in the corners of his eyes, even as he responds with only a prim sip, feigning disinterest.

“Does Will know?” Anthony asks, before turning wide-eyed to Matthew. “Of course he does, but you don’t. Our dear doctor is a _count_.”

“And you a lord, and neither of us with any interest in the roles,” Hannibal says.

“Too true.” Anthony lets the scotch settle warm over his tongue, savoring it before finally swallowing with a hum of pleasure. “I don’t know what to do with it all. Apparently he knew I joined the service. Frank, the gentle traitor, shared my letters with him.” A pause, and Anthony’s expression softens a little, though not in sadness. “He told me he was proud.”

“And so he should be,” Hannibal tells him softly, moving to take his seat again, also more relaxed, now that the potential timebomb that is Anthony Dimmond has been soothed and calmed with laughter and good company. “You saved countless lives.”

“So did you.”

“And so my father is proud of me,” Hannibal replies, grinning as he lifts his glass in silent toast. “And all the better, really, once I tell him that producing an heir will fall upon Mischa, and not me.”

“This is so incredibly, ridiculously scandalous,” Matt tells them both, blushing a little when they both look at him. “My family never had such concerns, it’s amazing how different situations and circumstances make one.”

“So the job of carrying on the family name will not fall to their only son?” Hannibal asks him, amused, and Matt snorts.

“No, you’re right. Forget I said anything.”

“What beautiful disappointments we’ve all become,” Anthony muses, lifting his glass in toast. “I, for one, could hardly be happier.”

They all sip in unison, their sighs joined in ease. They are settled amidst themselves, with their natures as they are, regardless of the world at odds with them. They have each other, an unusual family but one all the same, and little more matters than that.

“So what do I do,” Anthony asks, both of the men he loves most in his life. “Retire from teaching to run an estate? Continue teaching and weekend in the country? Hand it all over to Frank and be bloody well done with it?”

“Unfortunately I have nothing to tell you,” Hannibal says, earnest. “I am lucky that Mischa wishes to stay home and have a family, run the house. She will be more than capable.”

“While you galavant away in England, being a doctor or some such nonsense.”

“Precisely,” Hannibal smiles. “Falling in love left right and center with clever English poets and mechanics.”

“Shameful,” Anthony praises him.

“I would visit on the weekends and learn of your home, now,” Matt tells him, shrugging. “But I have an enormous family, I would relish the space.”

“Self-serving advice,” Anthony chastens him fondly. “My favorite kind. You do realize that you’ll be an absolute necessity there.”

“I would hope so,” Matthew laughs.

“And you’ll still need to do your essays.”

“Of course.”

“And that, barring a particularly favorable lightning strike, my mother will be there as well,” Anthony adds. He curls a hand against Matthew’s cheek, thumbing gently over the soft skin beneath his eye. “You shouldn’t have to bear the burden of her.”

“I can hold my own,” Matt promises him softly, turning against Anthony’s palm. “You will understand when you meet my family.”

“Good lord, I almost forgot.”

Hannibal blinks, smiling as he seeks between the two of them with gentle eyes.

“Please,” he murmurs. “Tell me what you have convinced this pompous untraveled ass to leave his tiny island.”

“I have been to the mainland,” Anthony complains.

“But not the colonies.”

“Bugger the colonies.”

“Well,” Matt lifts his eyes to the ceiling and smiles, cheeks warming.

Hannibal blinks. Then he licks his bottom lip into his mouth, and releasing it slowly, blinks again. It begins as a tremor, shoulders first, and carries upward into a laugh so sudden and loud that it seems to surprise him and he presses his hand quickly against his mouth.

“It’s the height of rudeness to invite one’s self to another’s event,” he finally says, “but I am as tempted as I will ever be.”

“And absolutely forbidden,” Anthony declares, watching Hannibal with alarm.

“You can’t forbid me from America, darling.”

“Like Hell I can’t. I’ll tell them - I’ll tell them you’re an anarchist.”

Hannibal simply tilts his head a little, and Anthony slumps, swallowing his scotch. Hannibal lifts his own towards Matthew. “Admirably done, Mr. Brown.”

“I only extended the offer,” Matt grins. “It was Mr. Dimmond who accepted it.”

With a movement akin to a ruffled bird smoothing its feathers, Anthony straightens, a brow arched high. “I look forward to meeting all of the colorful members of Mr. Brown’s family, listening to jazz music and watching their short-skirted dancers, and -”

“Not drinking,” Hannibal adds for him.

Anthony blanches.

“Oh god, darling, must we go?” he murmurs weakly, and Matthew shakes his head slowly, utterly delighted, entirely enamored. He flicks his eyes to Hannibal and smiles a little wider.

“I have my work cut out,” he laments. “Not only taking this terrible man to a country in the middle of temperance, but introducing him to my highly religious and rather plentiful Catholic family.”

“It sounds like the beginning of a farce.”

“It really does,” Hannibal agrees. “Are you sure you wouldn’t have Will and I along?”

“How in God’s name would that make it _less_ of a farce?”

“It wouldn’t,” Hannibal agrees. “It would make it an even more entertaining one.”

As if on cue, the keys click in the door. Anthony raises a brow to Hannibal in challenge. Hannibal regards him mildly. Will stops completely, still in the doorway, and seems to consider going right back out again.

“Beloved,” Hannibal begins, but Will shakes his head.

“No, whatever it is, no.”

“Wouldn’t you even like to hear -”

“Absolutely not.”

Anthony’s grin widens. “We were just talking about -”

“Goodnight, Hannibal. Mr. Dimmond. Mr. Brown,” Will says as he closes the door behind himself, cane clicking a little quicker against the floor as he tries to bypass the lot of them. Hannibal is swift, however, and in a few steps has Will warmly by the waist.

“The sun’s not even set yet,” he murmurs against the back of Will’s neck as he laughs, helpless.

“You’re scheming. I can smell it in the air and it smells uncannily like scotch and primrose oil cigarettes.”

“Don’t worry, Mr. Graham,” Matt tells him. “I’ll soon be dragging him to the colonies, to meet the Catholics and the fairies, and to sober up a bit with Prohibition in effect.”

Will blinks, and laughs just as loudly as Hannibal had. Anthony curses them both and seeks for another cigarette.

“I’m sorry, that’s terribly rude of me,” he says.

“Have you ever even been to the colonies?” Anthony asks.

“Absolutely not. I’m sure your family’s lovely, Matthew. The fairies, too. The Catholics I’m less certain of, but -”

“I thought you were off to bed?” Anthony asks around his cigarette, giving Matt a dire look as he lights this one too.

“Temperance meets Anthony Dimmond,” sighs Will, leaning back against Hannibal who gladly surrounds him in arms and hides a grin against his hair. “That sounds like the beginning of a farce.”

“Bollocks to the lot of you,” Anthony mumbles, gently tugging Matt’s hair as he laughs softly against him.

Lord, they are lovely, all of them. Free and dire in their humor, all having seen enough, in their own ways, to last them a lifetime. He would love nothing more than to drag the entire band with him to America, to watch Hannibal and Will indulge in the music there, the food, Will in the enormous ports that England only imagines it rivals. He would love nothing more than to meet the family Matt grew up in, the bustle and busyness of it, the area, the city, the country… he wants to taste it on his tongue and feel it through every pore of his body.

He needs a drink.

Or to stop drinking. This is always the hardest of questions to answer.

“Our poet is also now a lord,” Hannibal murmurs against Will’s ear, making him shiver and laugh. “Officially.”

“God, how terrible,” Will laughs. “No wonder you’re drinking.”

“Your facetious tone, scarcely hiding your envy for my class, aside,” Anthony says, “if that’s why I’m drinking now, why did I drink before?”

Will considers the question, and says, “Because you were not a lord.”

Anthony’s eyes narrow in a smile. “Touche, Mr. Graham. We will be remiss without your biting wit to soothe the fevered vaudeville humor of the Americans around us.”

“But I’m -” Matthew begins and Anthony turns to him, resting a hand over his mouth. He kisses the backs of his fingers and hushes him with a grin.

“I know, darling, I know. Try not to remind me.”

“You will indeed be remiss, and we will in turn miss you terribly,” Will says, turning to Hannibal and shaking his head when he meets Hannibal’s amused gaze. “Correct? Hannibal, please.”

“Would you like to go to America, darling?”

Will laughs, helpless. “No, I would prefer to stay in Oxford, thank you.”

“And leave us to get lost in Baltimore alone?” Anthony replies, sounding scandalized once more. “Sober and religious and colonial?”

“You know we’re no longer -”

“Hush, sweet thing.” Anthony pets Matt’s cheek as the other snorts.

“The invitation has been extended to us,” Hannibal tells Will, swaying him gently where he stands as Will presses a hand to his face and shakes his head, shoulders trembling with laughter. “Though I suppose we could go to the more frightful states, like San Fransisco, should Baltimore prove a little too much.”

“The invitation wasn’t actually ever extended,” Anthony points out, though his regret is immediate as Hannibal gives him a look and Will gives Hannibal one in turn.

“Then that’s that, isn’t it?”

“It needn’t be,” Hannibal says, carefully collecting Will from his feet and cane alike to carry him back towards the sitting room, cheerfully ignoring his protests. “In just this way, I’ll whisk you off.”

“If you can get me across the Atlantic ‘just this way’,” Will laughs, “then I’ll consider it. When are you going?” he asks the other two, cheeks florid scarlet as Hannibal settles with Will in his lap.

“When are you available?” Anthony asks.

“Long vac,” Matt answers. “So you wouldn’t have to be teaching.”

“That sounds like an invitation.”

“I’m not going to bloody America,” Will exclaims, shaking his head as Hannibal searches his eyes, imploring. “No. I get seasick. Take me somewhere nearer, if you must. I’ve heard shocking things about the state of Berlin these days.”

Anthony’s eyes widen. “You wouldn’t dare.”

Matthew leans a little nearer, whispering, “What’s in Berlin?”

“Only the most magnificent parties and rampant debauchery in the civilized world. Nude cabarets and drink and song and _orgies_ for _everyone_ ,” Anthony huffs. “I’m told it puts our Paris to shame, and if you two go without us, I swear I’ll hunt you down myself. Hannibal I’ll only need to distract with a dish of fanciful food. Will, you’ve got a cane so you’ll be easy to catch.”

Will laughs, triumphant, and Matt shifts to lay his head in Anthony’s lap, letting his own legs hang over the edge of the sofa.

“Would you all last the evenings there, I wonder?” Matt muses, grinning wide when his poet glares down at him. “You’re not as young as you used to be, Mr. Dimmond.”

Anthony regards - aghast - the young man in his lap, beautiful youthful thing that he is. He releases a long and put-upon sigh, stroking his cheek until he can simply rest his hand across Matthew’s mouth and keep it there.

“Darling boy,” he says, “I will so enjoy watching you grow as old and grey as I. Know that as you punt my withered bones down the Cam, struggling to drag your stick from the mud to get us further than a single slip, I will mock you ruthlessly.”

“And?” Matthew asks from beneath his poet’s palm.

With a squint directed towards Will and Hannibal, Anthony leans low enough to hide his whisper against Matthew’s ear. “And I will love you even then, despite how entirely awful you are to me.”

He kisses just beside his ear and Matthew shivers. Anthony leans back, triumphant, and settles with drag from his cigarette. “Very well, then. We will away to the rebel colonies, and I will send you countless postcards espousing how very lovely the Brown family is, how accommodating the city of -”

“Baltimore,” Matthew says, muffled.

“And pleading with you to make arrangements for us all to go to Berlin, so that I might quench my overwhelming thirst upon return.”

“Sounds most delightful,” Will replies, laughing when Hannibal squeezes him a little tighter and kisses behind his ear as well. They sit, all four of them, comfortable and content, three warmed with alcohol and one happy to be amidst them without it. With a sigh, he attempts to wriggle free.

“I need to make dinner.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re on your way to inebriation, all three of you, and I might as well.”

“How do you know we’re staying?” Anthony asks him, lifting a proud eyebrow.

“We always stay,” Matt mumbles against his hand, laughing when he’s cooly regarded.

Will finally manages loose, with Hannibal’s hand against his own in support, just as quickly released to let him stand on his own.

“That,” Will agrees, amused, “and the pile of bags beside the door. Little closer to it and you’d all be one short for your German orgies.”

Anthony’s eyes widen as Hannibal’s lips part in gentle surprise. It’s Matt that laughs first, delighted, and the first as well to stand and help Will with supper.


	19. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“I used to watch the boats come in,” he says. “All the time wondering who was on them, why they were on their way here. I would guess at the number of stowaways and consider finding a way to hide on the ships for when they left again.”_
> 
> _“Going where?”_
> 
> _“Anywhere,” Matt laughs, spreading his fingers and curling them in tickling traces over Anthony’s chest. “On great and strange adventures outside of my little family home.”_
> 
> _“Did you ever try?”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta'd by our beloved [Noodle](http://noodletheelephant.tumblr.com/)!

Matt always nuzzles in his sleep when his dreams are peaceful, Anthony’s come to recognize. It’s scarcely surprising, then, when several hours after a particularly welcome meal, Matt nuzzles up and presses a warm kiss beneath his jaw. Anthony does little more than turn his eyes to the window and gently hum to soothe him to sleep.

“Will you be alright on the boat over?” Matt asks him quietly, voice sleep-muffled and warm. “To Baltimore, I mean?”

They’ve managed their clothes off, but lazy rutting came to little fruition. They curled together bare, instead, glad to be in a place with only happy memories for them both. Anthony tilts his head toward Matthew, and rests his cheek against his hair.

“It’s only five days there, with good weather,” Anthony says. “I’m sure we’ll make the absolute most of it.”

“We must,” agrees Matt, grinning a little. “Reassuring each other that no, no, my stomach is fine, it must be all the wine.”

Anthony laughs, turning onto his side to face Matthew. He strokes his cheek and runs fingers through his hair, fingertips teasing around the shell of his ear and easing the shiver that follows with a palm down the side of his neck. Only now, when Matthew has so entirely entwined his life with Anthony’s, does Anthony realize the shyness in him when first they met. Matthew is as brazen as the rest of them, now, not only able but eager to speak his mind and make smart remarks, capably holding his own.

How shy they both were, in their own ways. How uncertain of what now seems as natural and necessary as breathing.

“Will you be alright,” Anthony asks, “once we’re there? You know I don’t mean most of the things I say. Much as I live to scandalize, I would never forgive myself for being an embarrassment to you.”

Matt shakes his head and settles closer, blinking sleepily up at his partner.

“I want you there,” he says quietly. “I wouldn’t have invited you otherwise, I…” He takes a breath and sighs it out, catching a yawn against the pillow when it comes unbidden. “I want you to meet them. I don’t think I can tell them who you are to me, but I want you to see where I grew up. See my city and the people who live there. My own unusual family.”

“God, I hope you won’t tell them who I am to you,” Anthony laughs, no harm in his words but aware - always aware - of the necessities of their existence. To become prideful or lax in their caution invites problems that none need. The taunts to which they cheerfully make rude gestures would then be the least of their concerns. Anthony knows the desire to shout one’s love from every rooftop, and spit on those who would see it as anything but good and true.

He knows just as well that while battles may be won, the war cannot be, and they are lucky to have their own peace within it.

“I look forward to being in your capable care and guidance,” Anthony says. “I will consider it a personal challenge to act as if I am a respected professor, rather than all the far more terrible things I actually am.”

Matthew lifts his eyes, heavy-lidded, and smiles. His cheeks and lips are ruddy from drink and laughter and a languid exhaustion. He’s exquisite, and Anthony touches soft kisses from his brow to the bridge of his nose.

“My beautiful colonial,” he whispers, grinning when Matthew lets out a long, exasperated sigh.

“Not for a century. Almost a century and a half,” he mutters. He settles again before adding beneath his breath, “Redcoat bastard.”

There’s a long pause, so long that Matthew peeks upward in concern just as Anthony laughs brightly, delighted beyond measure. “Listen to you! The proud product of a lot of wasted tea. God,” he chuckles, before twisting their lips together into a long kiss and sighing free. “I love you, my little rebel.”

Matt snuggles closer and wraps his arms around Anthony’s middle. “I love you too.”

For a few moments they’re quiet, and Anthony thinks that perhaps Matthew has fallen back to sleep once more, settled and sated and soft as he is, but then he speaks again, quieter.

“I used to watch the boats come in,” he says. “All the time wondering who was on them, why they were on their way here. I would guess at the number of stowaways and consider finding a way to hide on the ships for when they left again.”

“Going where?”

“Anywhere,” Matt laughs, spreading his fingers and curling them in tickling traces over Anthony’s chest. “On great and strange adventures outside of my little family home.”

“Did you ever try?”

“And risk being home late for supper? No,” Matt admits with a sheepish grin. Anthony soothes the blush from his cheek with a palm placed against, and smiles.

“A brave idea anyway,” he says. “You might have ended up in Africa. Or Bombay. China, perhaps. I’m glad you didn’t go,” Anthony decides.

“Why?”

“If you did, I’d have had to search far further than my own backyard to find the part of my heart that was missing,” he says. “All because you carted it off to bloody Bombay.”

Matt laughs and shakes his head, nosing against Anthony's cheek. The idea of exotic adventure always tempted him but never took root, plucked away by his sense of obligations towards his family, who needed him there. Not like the words he had read in that strange poetry book in the library that grew from him and flourished. Not like the thoughts that flowered beautiful and intoxicating from those vines.

“I’m proud of you,” Matthew says after a moment. “For going. For coming home and telling Hannibal and Will. For letting me help you when you needed the help.”

“You’re getting awfully sentimental,” Anthony murmurs and Matt laughs again.

“I’m drunk. But I'm no less certain of my words.”

Anthony gathers Matthew’s sleep-soft body against his own with a palm at the base of his back. Full bellies and lazy hearts press together. A rocking movement carries upward from Anthony’s hips until their lips meet. Beyond the warm movements of their mouth against the other, tongues clicking softly when they touch, Anthony is hardly demanding. Both are sated on food and drink and good company; even their arms do no more than rest heavy over the other’s form.

“I would not have gone,” Anthony admits, though it hardly needs saying. “If not for your presence, I’d not have even considered going. I am not a brave man, Matthew. Foolhardy, perhaps, but they’re far from the same.”

“You went to war,” Matt says. “That’s very brave.”

“And I hid myself in words rather than face the front. What you possess, and Will alike, is real courage. True strength of character. You do what’s right no matter what may come of it.” He tilts his head to nuzzle his cheek, pressing a kiss to the faint freckles beneath his eye. “I admire you enormously, brave Mr. Brown,” he murmurs. “Your patience with me is more than I deserve.”

“You must be drunk too,” Matt mumbles, but Anthony can feel his smile. Always patient. Always lovely. Matt shifts enough to press atop Anthony, stomach to stomach, chest to chest, arms folded against his collarbone to watch him.

“I love the idea that I get to travel with you,” he says. 

“Back home?”

“Anywhere,” Matt grins. “Anywhere and everywhere. You can show me Paris. Madrid. Morocco. We can visit Indochina and Japan. Mexico -”

“Why there?”

“Anywhere,” Matt repeats, laughing. “Everywhere. I get to see the world with you.”

Anthony smiles sleepily, cupping Matthew’s cheeks to guide him into another soft kiss. “Perhaps we’ll wait on Spain and Morocco,” he says, wry. “You needn’t flaunt your bravery, darling, I’ve already praised you for it.”

He upends Matthew gently and lays atop him instead. Hips rocking downward, he moans against his lover’s mouth and presses him back into the pillow with a kiss. Slender fingers seek over well-honed stomach, slipping through the thick hair between his legs and rubbing firm against the base of his cock. Matthew’s voice leaves him in a little sigh, gaze dark and hooded.

“Let’s just start with the colonies,” Anthony suggests, delighted when Matthew sucks in another breath of protest. Before he can proclaim his independence again, Anthony claims back his little rebel with another kiss.

The interest burns warm within them, now, as it had not immediately after dinner and pleasantries. Matt spreads his legs and lets his eyes close as he’s kissed into the mattress. His own hands seek up against Anthony’s hair, over his face and down his back as Matthew drapes his arms over him and succumbs to the comfort of being worked to hardness.

It feels good. It feels so good.

Anthony feels good.

Shoulders no longer curved by pain and responsibility but by pleasure, gasps warm and soft panted against Matthew’s lips when they part to breathe. Deliberately, Matt folds his legs over Anthony’s, spread for him and clinging on, thumbs stroking against the outline of elegant shoulder blades and over the bend of his spine. Anthony ducks his head, nuzzled and kissed as he does, to look down the length of Matthew’s body. His stomach tightens, ridged muscles snared tight under sun-bronzed skin. Nipples peaked on hard pectorals, hairless but far from boyish. His cock, straining against Anthony’s teasing touch, veins darkening along its thickening shaft.

Anthony’s appreciation for Matthew extends far beyond the physical, but he will be damned the day he doesn’t revel in that, as well.

“Bloody beautiful,” he curses, rocking together to watch their lengths pressed between them. “Remind me to write Pope and President both in thanks for creating a perfection so exquisite as you.”

Matthew laughs, brash and loud and delighted, and turns his head away, only to have his jaw kissed next instead of his lips.

“A poet, certainly not a scientist,” Matt tells him, snorting softly as he watches Anthony above him. “I love you. I love you so much.”

The very thought that he would ever meet Anthony, that perhaps he would set foot to American soil or anywhere, so long as Matthew could take a train or a bus or a donkey cart to get to meet him, is nothing now compared to their intimacy. Compared to the fact that he will be coming to meet Matt’s family. That he’ll be coming to see his home.

With a gasp and a twist, Matthew arches higher, slips his fingers through Anthony’s hair and tugs it until the other groans in pleasure. Anthony ruts harder against him, body bucking in stern little thrusts that grind his cock against the flat of Anthony’s belly. He lets himself be held, bent and turned into a kiss, sighing against Matthew’s mouth.

“We’ll have to go to New York while we’re there. Is it very far?”

“Not very,” Matthew whispers, shivering as Anthony turns aside and slicks his palm with a dollop of spit. Matt moans, arching, as it’s rubbed between his legs and inside him with familiar fingers. “Why?”

“Dot Parker will bleed me dry with her rapier pen if we don’t lunch with them at the Algonquin. And Fitzgerald’s been banging on about some new book he wants me to look at. He won’t let it go that I wouldn’t meet them in Paris.”

“But why wouldn’t you -” Matthew’s words cut short in a high whimper as Anthony turns his fingers and strokes.

“He was with Ernest the whole time. I don’t care how much a ladies’ man he thinks himself, I’d sooner trust my besotted backside to a molly house than that man.”

Again Matthew’s voice cracks and spills into a shuddering gasp as Anthony lines up against him, thick and hot, stretching him in steady, stiff thrusts. He whimpers his name and scrabbles fingernails against his shoulders, legs clutched against Anthony’s hips as he’s taken. Anthony sucks a mark against his throat, grabbing the headboard to stop from driving them into it when the bed shakes beneath a rough thrust.

“God, I love you,” he groans.

Matt just whimpers, holding on and letting himself feel the absolute exquisite pleasure that Anthony always brings him. Both are comfortable to be taken, to take, more often than not Matt finds himself biting his pleasure against Anthony’s shoulder as he fills him, and both are contented. But this…

There is a deeper intimacy here, a promise and a demand made all at once. Matthew digs his nails harder against Anthony’s skin and tilts his head back to moan, unashamedly loud, up towards the ceiling.

“Terribly rude,” Anthony pants. “Waking our hosts.”

“It’s usually you,” Matthew whispers back, laughing.

“If you restrain yourself, you sweet and terrible thing, we can both have a go at waking them,” Anthony grins, leaning low again to savor the sweetness of Matthew’s laugh against his lips.

He works him wide, deep and unrelenting. Far from the furious claiming that has defined their uneasy time together over the preceding weeks, there is a giddy joy and relief in their sex now. Without make gauche and grandly meaningless claims, they have spoken of their future shared for an indefinite time. Anywhere, everywhere that one goes the other will be there, as much a necessity as blood requires the heart to move it.

They pulse now in that rhythm. Faster, harder, gasping short and noisy against the other’s mouth and cheek and throat, Anthony’s cock fills Matthew deep, a hand against his thighs to keep him spread. He pushes hard and holds, voice drawn into a sustained and unsteady hum where he leaves a mark sucked on Matthew’s throat.

“I’m going to come,” Matt warns him, laughing and whining when Anthony primly tells him that he will do no such thing. Not yet.

Matthew squirms, adjusting his position, arching to feel Anthony deeper, harder in him. He whispers his name, he tells him he loves him, over and over, until his voice breaks and trembles instead, and he does nothing more than make sounds of pleasure against Anthony’s sweaty throat.

His hands slip over his back and squeeze against his ass, laughing when Anthony curses and thrusts faster. They are a mess of hot breath and sweat and dizzying pleasure, tangled together in a bed as familiar as their own, pressing close and sharing each other. Anthony climaxes with a splintered groan and a sharp thrust that pulls Matthew’s lips across his teeth in a hiss. Cock pulsing in ribbons of pleasure, his voice tilts high and helpless when Matthew clenches around him to draw his pleasure out until he’s shaking.

“God,” Anthony grunts, dragging a kiss across Matthew’s cheek, smothering his lips with it. “I want to lick you clean.”

Shaking his head, Matthew has to bite his lip - grinning still - to keep himself at bay from the words.

“No?” Anthony demands, panting.

“I wouldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“I’ve been sitting on a train all day, and there’s not been time for a bath,” he murmurs, charmingly secretive and blushing even beneath cheeks pinked by passion. “You wouldn’t enjoy it.”

“You would.”

“Enough,” Matthew tells him, laughing, and Anthony bucks against him once more with a crooked grin, before sliding free. He rolls off him, ignoring the grunt, and once more over until he’s flat on his belly. His hips lift, just a little, and his brow in turn raises.

Matthew regards him from where he lies, still, his thighs trembling and skin slick with mess and sweat between his legs. He grins. Then he laughs, and slowly turns to slip atop Anthony instead.

“Demanding, relentless man.”

“I need to keep up with you, somehow.”

“Rather the opposite,” Matt laughs, setting his knees between Anthony’s and spreading him wider open. “I need to keep up with you.”

Matthew brings his fingers to Anthony’s lips and sighs hard when he sucks them into his mouth. Matt rocks slowly down against Anthony, teasing, touching, until his fingers are wet and he can free them from one heat and push them into another. As gentle and impatient at once as Anthony had been, Matthew kisses reverent over Anthony’s shoulders.

“You’d best give it your all,” Anthony remarks, watching Matthew over his shoulder, eyes hooded and smile curved wide. “They’ve not even stomped on the floor yet to quiet us.”

Matthew’s teeth graze the rise of Anthony’s shoulder as he splays his fingers wide inside him, working him open quickly, almost painfully, to add a third. Anthony trembles, muscles quivering from twitching fingers all the way to his toes, spreading and curling again and again. He puffs a moan against the pillow and bends higher, laughing when he tries to bring his legs together and Matthew spreads his own to keep them wide.

Anthony always responds to this - rough handling and gentle commands, youthful exuberance and stamina that leaves him spent. It isn’t an easy thing to exhaust Anthony Dimmond, even with his increasingly grey hair and dismally old outlook on the world. But Matthew knows, how to touch and where and when, he knows when Anthony needs to be pulled tight against him and when he wants to be shoved down to the mattress, held by a strength that delightfully surpasses his own.

“Thank God we’re staying here for a few days,” he mutters, rocking his softening cock down against the sheets in time with Matthew’s unrelenting fingers. “I couldn’t possibly sit aboard a train home after what you’re about to do to me.”

“You’re almost challenging me to do it again, then,” Matt tells him, slipping his fingers free and spitting on his palm to stroke himself slick.

“Aren’t I always?”

“Insatiable, terrible man. You should be ashamed.”

“Never,” Anthony laughs, and Matt kisses his cheek.

“Good.”

The push inward is slow, deliberate, and Matt slips a hand to rest against Anthony’s throat to feel his pulse skitter amidst the vibrations of sounds he makes too low to hear. As given to obedience in beneath Matthew as he is resistant to it everywhere else in his life, Anthony bends deeper, tilting back his head to bare his neck. Matthew sighs hot and harsh against his hair, planting his free hand to the bed.

Anthony curses. Lax muscles pull tight and ache wide around Matthew’s length, throbbing hot inside him. The air is thick with the scent of semen and sweat, already humid and heavy. A last drop pushes free from his spent cock and darkens the sheets beneath.

They can hardly manage a whole breath between them. Matthew pants ragged against Anthony’s shoulder, smearing spit and sweat in a sloppy kiss before he rests his cheek there and buries himself completely. Coarse hair rubs together, damp between them. Their balls rest together in the moment of blissful wholeness before he jerks his hips sharp against Anthony’s ass.

This time, he curses in French.

Matthew grins.

The language always sounds filthy to him, regardless of what is said. He knows most of the time Hannibal and Anthony speak of nothing untoward and yet every time he manages to pull the language from him, with intimacy, sex, anger, it is a personal victory.

At his heart, Anthony will always be the man he found in Paris, he will not be the young thing sobbing on the stairs of his home.

“I love you,” Matt tells him, kissing against the damp curls of hair as he continues to push, fast and rough, forcing his own orgasm to hold just a moment more. “But you can be louder than this.”

Anthony makes a helpless sound, nearly a whine, but the firm smack he receives against his bottom unravels his restraint entirely. His entire body shudders with the force of his moan, belted long and loud. Another clap of Matthew’s hand jerks his poet’s voice higher. Anthony grasps for the headboard but Matt takes his wrists in hand, holding them pinned above his head as he drives him into the mattress. His free fingers squeeze Anthony’s ass and spread it wider, as his voice splits into jerky, noisy whimpers, punctuated by every thrust.

“More,” Matthew gasps, muscles trembling as he holds himself back and Anthony down. “Please, professor.”

The word spoken even by himself undoes him with a laugh and a short, sharp cry. Their moans tangle as their bodies have, heated and thick, the bed’s squeaking finally stilled but for erratic thrusts jerked against Anthony’s ass. Anthony tries to squirm to kiss him. Matthew holds him down, unable to move as another wave of release unravels inside his poet. Cock swelling and emptying again and again, he all but collapses atop Anthony as their final fading moans and grunts are broken up by all-too familiar rapping on the floor above.

“Go to bed, Mr. Graham!” Anthony shouts, laughing.

Another rap against the floor has them both giggling, and obediently quieting. It never ceases to amuse Anthony that Will uses his cane to quiet them, like an old man impatient and half-deaf. Of course every time he makes a point to elaborate on this mental image he finds himself smacked upside the head and reminded that Will was, in fact, at the front and could still take Anthony despite his limp.

That is never contested, and the argument ends with Will laughing and trying to squirm free from an overly affectionate poet.

Matt kisses against Anthony’s ear and noses behind it.

“We’re a bloody mess,” he sighs. “How are you meant to run an estate and I for another scholarship like this?”

Anthony hums, folding his arms atop his pillow and resting his cheek on them. “You’d do well to make for Bombay or French Indochina once you’ve graduated,” he murmurs. “I’m already planning on you running the estate for me once you’re done with Cambridge.”

“I don’t know how,” laughs Matt.

“Then we’re equally skilled,” Anthony muses, smiling a little. “Just tell me where to sign and I will, and after a few years of that you’ll be able to slip your own version of my will into the stack of paperwork and inherit everything.”

“You’re crazy,” Matt tells him, but his laugh is a little more nervous now, a little breathless. Anthony merely hums, turning to look at him over his shoulder. “Anthony.”

“What?”

“I can’t inherit your estate, I hold no right to it by blood or marriage.”

“I’m not a solicitor…”

“No, you’re clearly not.”

“But in lacking any immediate family or heirs onto whom to bequeath that sprawling mess, why can’t I write it to you? I’m giving you ideas, darling, just jot it down and pass it along to me to sign with the dry goods order and next season’s floral choices for the groundskeeper.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” laughs Matt, brow creased. He shifts back to sit on his knees, freeing himself of Anthony’s newly sticky body, and turns him onto his side so they can see each other. “I wish you wouldn’t talk like this.”

“Dearest,” Anthony murmurs, amused but not cruelly so by Matt’s discomfort. He winces as he drags his leg across Matthew’s lap and opens his arms for his lover to lie against him, cheek against his chest. “God knows, and surely resents, that I plan on becoming an absolutely dreadful old spinster. I intend to rattle on for decades more about how I once knew such-and-such who became far more famous than I ever did, despite that he’s a hack,” he says. After a pause, he snorts, “Ernest, for instance.”

Matthew makes a little sound and Anthony sighs.

“You’re my family. You and the two old fairies nested up above us. They’re settled here and deserve nothing less than the dire boredom of Oxford. You’ve a family who could use the space,” he shrugs. “Or at least the money from letting the Crown buy it off.”

“Why do you always save these conversations for after sex?”

“When better to consider one’s eventual demise than at the height of feeling alive?”

“You’re terrible,” he sighs, still frowning against Anthony’s chest as the poet strokes his hair and tries to soothe the tension from his boy. Anthony’s wealth had never been a factor in Matthew’s interest in him, and both know that. Yet once in a while, it comes up in conversation in a way that makes Matt wonder if Anthony isn’t trying to invest in a guarantee.

He doesn’t need to.

To the ends of the bloody earth Matthew will follow that stupid man, he loves him so.

“You could have just asked me to marry you instead,” he mumbles.

Anthony laughs, giving Matt’s hair a tug and a little shake. “God,” he sighs. “That’d be something, wouldn’t it? Really scandalize the vicar when one of us shows up in a gown.”

“One of us?”

“I,” Anthony amends, graciously. “When I show up in a gown. It’s more baffling that way, since he knows me already. And my legs look marvelous in stockings.”

Matt snorts, but doesn’t argue. It’s a farfetched and stupid idea - two men will never marry, not in the eyes of God or the law. But it is a lovely fantasy to imagine it. A band on his finger and one on Anthony’s, a man who claimed he would never be tied down unless it was by silk scarves to a four-post bed.

He loves him.

He needs no ring to know that.

“You would look dashing in white,” he tells him.

“I do,” Anthony assures him, “especially in the form of silken underthings and garters.”

His amusement gentles when Matthew’s shoulders hold resistance taut - still firm, as if carrying a burden upon his back. He is carrying one, Anthony knows, and the nature of that weight is all too familiar. To him, to Hannibal, to Will and all the others like them. He spoke to Matthew of it once, long ago, on their tryst in the inn downriver from the university. Certain paths through the world that readily belong to others are barred to them. And though it is absurd to even consider that men like they might ever set foot upon them with each other, he is touched that Matthew would even imagine it.

Anthony ignores the little fuss when he slides down further into the bed, mindless of the damp spots on which they lie or the seed drying on their thighs and the curves of their bottoms. Anthony runs one hand in Matthew’s hair and sets the other beneath his chin. He tilts his attention upward, gently guiding him past reluctance, and kisses him.

“You beautiful romantic. My darling Matthew,” he murmurs, “need we dream of engaging in that tired old farce, truly? I know it seems unfair. They’d not think twice of allowing either of us to marry women we don’t love, for children or money or someone to put supper on before we’re home. They’d bless it and call it a sacred union, sanctioned and ordained.”

“Why not us?” Matthew whispers, as though aware of his own blasphemy even as he insists on saying it. “It isn’t fair, you’re right. Why are they allowed? Because the church decided it? They’re no better than we are.”

“No,” agrees Anthony. “No, we are better than they. We needn’t stoop so low as to duck our heads and hunch our shoulders before a God they say rebukes us. We needn’t stake the truth of our love on a tired old institution that represents little more than money changing hands.”

“Enough,” Matthew sighs. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

Matthew starts to turn but Anthony doesn’t let him, pressing brow to brow, nose to nose, and finally lips to lips again and again. “Dear boy, listen,” he says. “Listen for a moment to no more than the quiet between us, and tell me our vows are not already sworn.”

Matt blinks at him slowly and smiles. He looks at the man before him and just enjoys the sound of their breathing together, the warmth of their bodies. It is silly to think a ring could define anything. And in truth he hardly needs it. He has Anthony. He has his life before him.

And they have their life, before them both.

“For months,” he agrees, whispering warmly. “And for months more to come. And years on top of those.”

Anthony smiles, eyes closing as he tilts his nose against Matthew’s own. He breathes him in and holds him there, in his lungs and blood and heart and being, until he feels his pulse begin to quicken and sighs slowly out again. They share a gentle kiss, and then another.

“You may call yourself Dimmond, if you like,” he teases. “Though you’ll still be my own Mr. Brown.”

“Always,” Matt whispers, pressing close and folding himself small against his poet. He loves him, truly, as no other.

They will need to bathe in the morning. He will make breakfasts for their endlessly patient hosts to make up for the evening disturbance. He is happy, here, with all of them. He is happy.

That’s all that matters. No law or Church can change that to their will.


	20. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“All set with the luggage, then?” he asks softly._
> 
> _“All set. Two for each of us.”_
> 
> _“Clever darling,” murmurs Anthony, smoke unspooling from his lips. “Are you excited?”_
> 
> _“I will be.”_
> 
> _“Are you nervous?”_
> 
> _“I’ll be that, too,” Matthew laughs._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta'd by our beloved [Noodle](http://noodletheelephant.tumblr.com/)!

“How many suits is too many, do you think?”

“How many have you packed?”

Anthony’s tongue parts his lips and he holds his breath for a moment. A quick count, eyes towards the ceiling, of the ones packed and those laid out, and finally he sighs.

“All of them.”

With a laugh, eyes wide, Matthew shakes his head. “Too many,” he grins. “Far too many. You have dozens.”

“Yes.”

“Do you need dozens?”

“Yes,” Anthony says. “No. Perhaps.”

His fluttering fingers - splayed wide in dismay - are gathered in Matthew’s hands and brought to his boy’s lips. Anthony watches, expression softening, as his palms are kissed once each and then pressed to Matthew’s cheeks.

“If you find that you’re in need of something you left behind, we can buy another in the States. Hell, we’re not going to Siberia,” Matthew laughs gently.

“God,” murmurs Anthony, gathering Matt’s mouth against his own. Their kiss clicks lightly and Anthony slowly grins. “I love it when you swear. Uncouth, brash little beauty.”

“Pack,” Matthew begs him, as he’s done as many times that morning as Anthony has suits. “Or unpack, rather. Two trunks.”

“No.”

“Two trunks,” he insists, laughing helpless against his poet’s mouth. “Only two, one for each month we’re there. Everything else will wait for you here -”

“Matthew, please.”

“- and seem new again when we return.” 

Anthony makes an agonized sound, low in his throat, and Matt hushes him with another, deeper kiss. Their tongues coil together past parted lips, the pressure enough to force Anthony to take a step back before he tugs Matt away by his hair. 

“As reward for excellent marks this last term?” Matt asks, brows lifted.

“I have _amply_ rewarded you for that,” his professor murmurs, his own eyebrows raising in return. “Bending you over the kitchen table, spread across your lap in the armchair downstairs, on my knees…”

Matt sets a finger against Anthony's lips and kisses it. Their mouths don’t even meet, but the electricity between them is impossible to ignore. 

“Two trunks, my darling poet. You will leave with a third filled with mum’s sweaters and my sisters’ socks and scarves made just for you.”

“Will they really?”

“Make things for you? Undoubtedly.”

Anthony appears wonderfully pleased by the idea, cheeks warming, and Matt strokes his face again. He knows he should be giddy with excitement, and in truth he will be, within a few hours and the next day and the next.

For now, he must be the head where Anthony is the heart.

Anthony chases him for another kiss, grinning as Matt steps away. He pursues and misses again as Matthew twists aside with a laugh. Finally Anthony catches him around the waist and kisses behind his ear, sighing where he knows it tickles and spanning his hand up Matthew’s chest when he shivers.

“I love you,” he tells him. “I only worry for your sake.”

“I love you,” Matt grins, “and you needn’t.”

“I endeavor to make a good impression on your family. It would be unaccountably vulgar for me to be in ill-favor with them. I’d never forgive myself.”

“I promise they won’t think poorly of you for not bringing seventeen cravats,” laughs Matthew, turning in the confines of Anthony’s arms to rest his hands against his poet’s chest. “‘My dear friend and traveling companion’, that’s how I’ll introduce you.”

“Not as your tutor?”

“You’re not, are you?” Matthew teases. “Not even in the same college, as you’ve reminded me repeatedly. Besides, it’s not untoward for friends to travel together.”

“Oh,” Anthony laughs, low and warm against Matthew’s neck as his hands span downwards over his bottom. “Oh, but it will be.”

Matt laughs and beats gently against Anthony’s chest with soft fists.

“You’re a horror,” he exclaims, squirming free and returning to his own trunks, packed carefully and frugally for the trip away. The same trunks he had arrived with, one packed with clothes, the other with gifts for his family.

He brings books and beautiful silken scarves for his sisters. A doll for one, pretty shoes for another. He hopes they haven't changed so much since he saw them last that the gifts are irrelevant. He brings new cookery utensils for his mother. He brings a sturdy hat and his university results for his father.

He wishes with all his heart that he could introduce Anthony as his partner, but he knows it will be impossible. He will rely on the fact that he is as much Anthony’s guide around the city as he is there to visit home. And then once they leave for New York…

“You have me worried now, you terrible man, I haven’t packed a single suit,” Matt mutters.

“Have you any?” Anthony asks, blinking abashed when Matthew gives him a dry look. “Leave them,” he says. “Let me buy you something lovely when we reach New York.”

He pops open the straining clasp on one of the trunks and sighs, hands on his hips, as he surveys the spread of silk and velvet, seersucker and linen within. Worrying his lip between his teeth, it takes him a moment more to feel Matthew’s attention still on him. Anthony glances up.

“I didn’t mean that yours are inadequate,” he says, sighing. “Nor you incapable of supplying yourself with them.”

“You know how I feel about spending money that way.”

“Dearest, lovely boy, you are remarkable in both stubbornness and your adherence to the Catholic work ethic. I’m hardly doing it to show off to you, so much as relishing the opportunity to show you off to others. Come here,” he says, reeling Matthew toward him by his wrist. He sighs against his brow and kisses him there, lips lingering as he murmurs, “I assure you, darling, my desire is wholly self-serving. It’s far less a desire to see you in a bespoke suit than it is to watch your measurements be taken.”

Matt snorts and turns his head in a nuzzle against Anthony's lips. He is still unused to being spoiled so by Anthony, who is more than happy to spend his money on beautiful things - Matthew among them. He likes it, of course, but there is always a lingering panic that he should do more, be more, earn it somehow.

“I shall be on my best behaviour for a fitting then,” he murmurs, smiling wide.

They share another kiss, locked warmly together for long enough to settle their fluttering hearts to ease once more. Both are, in equal measure, enthused and anxious. But as they take short tones with the other from time to time, as they fret and fuss, they just as quickly come back together, sharing the reassurance of touch and nearness. When their kiss separates, it’s with a shared sigh.

“There we are,” Anthony grins. “Now I need your help with something.”

“Of course,” Matt says with a smile as Anthony steps back towards his trunks. “Anything.”

“How many should I bring? Shall we risk the ignominy of being seen more than once in the same thing?”

“Are you serious?” Matthew laughs, brow creased.

“Entirely so. It will cause a minor scandal if it’s noticed, and be certain that it will be, but perhaps carried with a lax air of casual indifference, they’ll maybe wonder if we’re not the one having one over on them,” Anthony says, squinting. “Six then. A quarter of what I was going to bring, and if I panic at the last moment, I’ll have a new one made with you. And herein, your assistance is required.”

Anthony bends to snap open the latches on each of the trunks, flinging them wide open one after the next. Matthew watches, amused, as overlooking his packed plumage, Anthony seeks with nervous fingers to light a cigarette.

“I’m incapable,” Anthony says. “Choose which six you like best, and pack them up before I can see and therefore argue your choices.”

Matt snorts and shakes his head, gently pushing Anthony out of the room and turning to his trunks to look through them.

He is childishly in love with Anthony’s suits. All are heavy, soft and in colors no other man could pull off - save Hannibal, perhaps. He lets his fingers linger over the silk and velvet, the greens and violets and yellows.

He chooses the suits he has the best memories associated with. Those he has seen Anthony model for him half-drunk at Hannibal and Will’s house, those he has worn proudly through cool autumn lectures, those he has allowed Matt to peel from him in their bedroom.

He selects five. As for the sixth, he deliberates on which is the most garish and adds it as well. For Anthony’s sake. He cannot have his poet be too dour, after all.

Outside the door, Anthony lingers with his shoulder against the hallway wall. Tall body slouched, he holds his cigarette aloft and smokes it peaceably, despite the occasional twitch to look back when Matthew snaps a jacket straight to fold it again. To his credit, Anthony doesn’t peek.

He’s entirely too content to listen to Matthew handle the situation with aplomb, as he does every situation in which they seem to find themselves. To call Anthony reliant on Matthew would be a minimization - he can scarcely imagine life without him. Of course Anthony could _manage_ on his own. He could empty his own ashtrays and make his own tea, pack his own garments and change the sheets. But why? For what purpose, and with what quality of attention? Without Matthew’s gentle attendance, his presence, his warmth, Anthony would still be surrounded by empty bottles and blank pages, dismal and unhappy.

He wonders, now and then, if perhaps it’s unfair that someone so young and with so promising a future as Matthew be expected to tend Anthony’s needs.

He eases his mind by reminding himself that he could no more keep Matthew from doing so than he could ask him to change the color of his eyes.

“I don’t deserve you,” Anthony says, not at all unhappy in this declaration or the one that follows. “Selfless, sweet boy, I would be lost without you.”

Matt clicks his tongue loud enough to hear and envelopes Anthony in a hug as he leaves the bedroom again. He presses his cheek against his shoulder until Anthony passes the cigarette back, and Matthew takes a drag.

“I know,” he says, exhaling warm smoke against Anthony’s back. “I love you too.”

They have several hours more before their car will arrive to take them to the port. They have time enough to doze and rest, enough to eat, enough to smoke and drink and enjoy each other, yet neither seem to want to move beyond holding the other just so. Comfort, gentleness, guarantee of understanding and love.

Matt deliberately nuzzles between Anthony’s shoulders and clasps his hands against Anthony’s stomach, holding him tight and close. His poet rests an arm over his hands, stroking the inside of Matthew’s elbow with his thumb.

“All set with the luggage, then?” he asks softly.

“All set. Two for each of us.”

“Clever darling,” murmurs Anthony, smoke unspooling from his lips. “Are you excited?”

“I will be.”

“Are you nervous?”

“I’ll be that, too,” Matthew laughs, shaking his head a little before settling once more against Anthony’s back. He listens to the rush of air and smoke that fills his lungs. His heart beats quicker as he holds the breath, and settles when he sighs it free. Matthew imagines he could fall asleep standing, just so, with the sound of his poet’s body against his ear as soothing as the sea. “I am excited,” he decides. “I can’t wait for you to meet them.”

“You did tell them I’m coming, I hope?”

“Yes,” Matthew laughs. “Yes, I told them. Mum was ecstatic at the news.”

“Good lord, truly?”

“Yes. She’s been trying to pick my brain about my college for months.”

“And what have you told her?”

“That I have made friends with an esteemed lecturer at another college and that you and I find common ground in travel, literature, and aesthetics.”

Anthony hums, chewing his lip before turning to look over his shoulder at his boy.

“She won’t ask about what it is we enjoy together, will she?”

“No,” Matt assures him. “No, she shan’t. But my sisters will.”

Anthony completes his turn, then, pivoting nimbly in Matthew’s embrace. Past the flickering embers of his cigarette, he squints, and plucking it from his lips blows the smoke up and away.

“And what will you tell them?”

“That we enjoy poetry together, visiting friends, traveling to the sea on long weekends…”

“Matthew,” sighs Anthony, laughing exasperated. “Be fair with me, darling, I grew up with no siblings of my own. It’s a relationship with which I’m wholly unfamiliar. I’m simply trying to discern…”

“Whether or not they know,” Matt asks, brow raised meaningfully.

“Yes.”

“They know.”

Anthony swallows and Matt feels it against his own ribs, where he presses close. He holds Anthony a little longer before shifting beneath his arm to stand and face him instead.

“Siblings, much as they may claim to hate each other, know much more than parents do. There’s a connection there no one can predict or explain. Beth knows me as though we shared a womb, though we never did. She knows. She knew when I started bringing your books home.”

Anthony swallows again, and Matthew sets a hand to his cheek to soothe him. 

“The twins find delight in any relationship, and they know me well enough to know when I’m smitten. As for the eldest… I don’t know. I was never close nor combative with Mary or Annabelle.”

Anthony tilts his cheek against Matthew’s hand. Kissing his palm, he speaks softly against it. “You’ll forgive me saying it, I hope, but for my own sake,” he says. “Be cautious, then, besotted boy. There are times, when facing a challenge to one’s faith and upbringing, that even the most lapsed adherent may suddenly become ardent again.”

Matthew doesn’t argue with him, all too aware of the place from which Anthony speaks. He kisses him instead, holding him close, hand against cheek. Anthony hums softly, until a smile separates them.

“Besides,” he says, pulling away only to seek out an ashtray for the remains of his cigarette. “I’ve always found that those who can see the truth of us are typically ambivalent about our relationships. Those who would be angered by it are less likely to see us for what we are, more willing to accept us as - what was it?”

“‘Dear friends and traveling companions’,” Matthew says.

Anthony grins, dropping back to sit on the bed, with little mind for the expensive garments laid out beneath him. “So your mother is pleased. The twins, and Beth will be, as you say,” he says. “You, as a fifth. I daresay with only three undecided, this is already going remarkably well.”

Matt laughs, then, bright and lovely, and shakes his head. Anthony blinks, confused.

“I have to admit, I’m so strangely charmed by the fact that you seek their approval. You want no one’s, usually.”

“Very few people in this world matter to you, my darling, and those that do are certainly worth fretting over.”

Matthew considers this, with slow steps across the floor. Before Anthony, he bends at the waist, sketching a bow, and kisses Anthony softly. He thinks of his own panic in meeting Will and Hannibal. Should he ever be fortunate enough to meet Tobias and Franklyn, he will be just as nervous. It is truly lovely, truly sweet to him, that Anthony would regard Matthew’s family so highly when he has had such cruel experiences with his own.

Anthony presses his palms to Matthew’s cheeks and holds him just so, kissing him upward. Their lips catch together, against bottom and top, corners, meeting and parting and drawing closed again. Running a hand back through Matt’s hair, Anthony sighs their kiss apart, brows together, his eyes closed.

“Remind me before we arrive to buy flowers for your mother.”

“I will.”

“And that I’ve packed my gifts for your family alongside your own.”

“I will.”

“And to get a bottle of something nice for your father.”

“Temperance.”

“Hell,” Anthony groans, but Matthew quiets him with a kiss that bears him back onto the bed. Amidst all the gaudy splendor of Anthony’s suits, they lay together, Matthew heavy atop Anthony who gladly coils around him.

“I’m very eager to meet them,” Anthony says, allowing himself a smile. “So that, even indirectly, I can thank them for you, and see from whence such loveliness has come.”

“Sentimentalist,” Matt laughs a little, nuzzling against his cheek.

“And before then…”

“Mmm.”

“I’ve you all to myself for five glorious days in a tiny room and we’re going to play captain and cabin boy until we’re seasick,” he murmurs.

Matt smiles, languid and slow, and regards Anthony beneath him with half-closed eyes and warm delight.

“You will make a fine cabin boy,” Matt tells him.

“‘O captain, my captain’,” Anthony declares, laughing low as he stretches upward to press their bodies together, head tilted aside and neck bared to the insistence of Matthew’s kiss. He stretches his arms above his head, delighted when Matthew readily sets a hand against his wrists and chases the line of his jaw with kisses to catch his ear between his teeth.

“Not the greatest choice of poem,” he murmurs, amused, and Anthony shivers at the nearness of it. “Considering his captain’s fallen cold and dead.”

Anthony considers the words, distracted as he is by the little kitten sounds Matthew makes against his ear, and the warm suckling that plucks down every line of cordage in the poet’s body. He rocks upward on each soft tug, a marionette in Matthew’s hands. With fingers curling against the hand that holds him fast, he turns his head to bring their gazes together, hooded in pleasure.

“‘O boy’,” Anthony purrs low, “‘tho’ thou are young and proud, I see the place where thou wilt lie.’”

“Between your legs?” Matt offers, and Anthony snorts, losing his composure.

“Must you ruin all art?”

“Always,” Matthew agrees, nodding sagely. “Entirely. I’m a savage colonial, I hardly know or understand art.”

Anthony hums and Matt kisses him, slipping to merely lie against him, chest to chest, and let his eyes close. Hours yet, hours more, and then they would leave England for two whole months to visit his family.

He can feel the excitement bubble within him, just a touch, a tingle, but it’s there, and he grins.

“Who else shall we meet in New York?” he asks.

Anthony turns his gaze to the ceiling in consideration, brows lifted. “Debutantes and socialites. Novelists, who are a misery to be around. Those who pretend to be novelists, but whose company is a pleasure. Terribly clever people and those who are simply terrible. Heirs and heiresses and actresses and actors. Playwrights. Producers. Journalists and humorists and those whom you’ll see in all of these places and still not quite grasp what exactly it is that they do.”

“It sounds extraordinary,” Matthew murmurs, eyes wide.

“It will be, for better or worse,” grins Anthony, sounding no less pleased. “Fitzgerald will certainly put something together, by which I mean Zelda will. The Vicious Circle will keep us in our cups and their games for as long as they can and then write thinly veiled remarks about us behind our backs. In London, we are careful in how we prick our darlings, to sketch their portrait in drops of blood. There?” he snorts. “They keep stilettos in their inkwells, waiting for the moment no one’s looking so they can outwit the others in verbal shanking.”

“But they’re your friends, aren’t they?”

“Absolutely. I’d expect nothing less.”

Matthew laughs and buries his face against Anthony’s chest, delighted by him, entirely in love. He wonders, once more, what he did to deserve this amazing man. Not only him but his love, his appreciation and kindness. His heart and soul.

Matthew knows no one famous and had never hoped to. He never imagined lavish parties or bright lights and hundreds of affluent people. His hope had been simply to get to a good college, to graduate and make his family proud with his work. He decided to study nursing because Annabelle had, and because he saw and heard enough to know just how cruelly underappreciated the profession was.

Now he lays atop a lord, bright and bubbly and proud, and he is as happy as a cat in the sun.

Matt checks the time on the large clock he can just see out in the corridor and licks his lips.

“We have three hours.”

“So it seems.”

“To take the car to the port, and take our bags aboard and ourselves with them.”

“I would hope so.”

“How shall we spend our time, until then?” 

Anthony folds his arms beneath his head, accepting the kiss that comes his way and meets his chin. The center of his bottom lip. The tip of his nose.

“Would you think less of me -”

“You know the answer to that.”

Laughing, Anthony shakes his head. “And yet I keep trying,” he muses. “What if we were to simply lay here, just so, pressed close and speaking softly, smoking, kissing. We will have five uninterrupted days to know each other properly. There will be weeks of grand adventure after. But for two months thence, we will not have this.”

“Home,” Matthew says, and Anthony smiles.

“Yes.”

Matt watches him, shifts a little to lie on his side against Anthony’s chest, and feels his cheeks warm.

“I would like nothing more,” he whispers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We'll be back in the future with more of Anthony and Matthew on their expedition to America - subscribe to both/either of us and you'll get the notifications as soon as we start to share them. In the interim, thank you for reading, thank you for commenting, and we love you all!


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